Just Cause
by gaelicspirit
Summary: Season 3, set immediately after 3.12, Jus In Bello. Picking up the pieces from a soul-crushing loss, Sam works to find a way to regain focus as Dean escapes his destiny inside another hunt. But this time, will 'acceptable losses' include the Winchesters?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** They're not mine. More's the pity. All locations are fabricated and the lore in this story has been manipulated to suit my nefarious, storytelling purposes.

**Spoilers:** Season 3. The majority is set after 3.12, _Jus In Bello_. But there are spoilers for all of Season 3.

**a/n:** This is for **yasminke**.

A long time ago, in a country far, far away (from me), and in a beautiful display for what fandom can do to help our collective world, yasminke was part of a coordinated effort to raise money to help the victims of massive, destructive flooding in Australia. I tossed my hat in the **fandom_flood_ap** author's auction ring (on LiveJournal) and she was the winning bidder.

Based on my offer and her request (Season 2 or 3 tag, threat of Lilith or YED) I offer you this glimpse into our heroes after the events of a pivotal episode during an intriguing season. It's a tag…of sorts. It was a supposed to be a one-shot, but, um…grew. I'm posting it in two parts so that you don't get eye strain. *smiles*

**Yasminke**, I hope this fits the bill. Thank you for taking a chance on me and for your efforts to help people recover from tragedy. And…thank you for waiting.

I hope you all enjoy.

* * *

><p><em>We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here.<em>

_- Erich Maria Remarqu_

www

**Pontiac, IL, now**

He'd lost count of the number of graves he'd dug in his lifetime.

If he closed his eyes, he could remember each blunt impact of the shovel blade into the packed earth, feel the burn of the muscles that ran along his arms and back as he heaved the weight of dirt aside. The smell was always the same: rot, rain, and mud. The mud caked on him—even if it was desert dry. Grave dirt was always damp. And it clung to him as if wanting to pull him down, wrap him up, keep him there.

But those had been graves dug for the job. Holes designed to expose a solution, a means to the end of an evil. Digging those graves meant they were safe. They'd fixed the problem.

This one was different.

The dirt coated his hands, his arms, stuck to his hair, smeared his cheek. He'd made the hole too shallow, he knew, but there was something suffocating about the idea of there being six feet of earth between Dean and freedom.

"This just ain't right."

Bobby's voice sounded hollow, tinny. The wizened hunter was at once too close and too far away. And the only reason he was there at all was because Sam's body wasn't cooperating with him. His arms were heavy, his legs clumsy. He moved slower than he should.

And he couldn't stop shivering.

"He wouldn't have wanted this, Sam." Bobby tried again.

Bobby hadn't stopped talking about a hunter's burial since he'd found them, huddled in a pool of Dean's blood, Sam's arms wrapped in a frozen grip around his brother's still body. Sam had been aware of Bobby's eyes as they took in Dean's torn flesh, the way Dean still seemed to be looking at something, though it was clear _Dean _was no longer there.

Sam hadn't been able to answer Bobby's choked question of _how_, though Lilith's name beat with angry wings against his ears. He hadn't been able to tell Bobby how Lilith had sent Ruby away, how she'd managed to trap them in the room, how she'd pinned him to the wall, forcing him to watch, helpless, as the Hellhounds ripped his brother apart.

Dean's screams had echoed in his ears long after Lilith left, fearful when she hadn't been able to end them both. He could still hear it, even as Bobby helped him wrap the tattered remains of his brother's clothes around his shattered body: Dean's screams. And Lilith's name.

"Can you at least tell me…why?" Bobby asked, finally breaking the silence as Sam stood in a waist-deep hole in the middle of a nameless wood near Pontiac, Illinois. "Why…_this_?"

Sam looked over, fully intending to answer. To tell Bobby that this wasn't the end; he'd made a promise. A promise he hadn't been able to keep. And now…now he had to make up for that as best he could.

_I don't want to die…I don't want to go to Hell._

Sam opened his mouth, but the words tripped over themselves inside of him. Dean lay inside a crude wooden box, the top not yet fastened, at Bobby's feet, next to the hole. Removing the tattered clothes and replacing them with clean ones had been one of the hardest things Sam had ever had to do.

Dean had been so…still. So pliant. No fight, no resistance…no thrum of life beneath the touch of his fingers. Dean—his brother, the man who'd protected him to the end—was in Hell. And his shell was all that remained.

The shell he was going to need when Sam found a way to bring him back.

_I couldn't live with you dead. I just couldn't._

As Bobby watched him, waiting for an answer, Sam climbed out of the hole, unable to tear his eyes from his brother's pale face and closed eyes. Irrationally, he wanted to grab him up, hold him close, haul him away from this place in the woods where no one would find him. He wanted to scream, to cry, to beat something bloody, to run until his lungs exploded.

But he couldn't move. He couldn't speak. Couldn't _breathe…._

"Sam…?" Bobby prompted softly. After a moment Sam sensed his old friend shift, accepting that he wasn't going to get the answer he sought. "Let's…do you want to say anything?"

Sam felt his breath hitch. There was so much to say. There wasn't _enough_ to say.

Dean was lying there, in that box, in Hell, because of him. Every pain in Dean's life stemmed from _him._ His brother's face swam before his eyes as he tried desperately to find words enough to encompass a lifetime of sacrifice.

_Remember what Dad taught you…and Sam…remember what I taught you._

Images, memories, moments assaulted Sam sending him reeling. Hands…he saw Dean's hands—holding a sawed-off shotgun, felt them rubbing the top of his head, remembered reaching for them and felt them grip tight. He reeled, unable to stop himself. He tipped toward the maw in the earth, suddenly welcoming it, wanting it to swallow him.

"I gotcha," Bobby whispered, holding him. He could smell Old Spice, whiskey, gunpowder, and dirt. "I gotcha, boy."

Sam pushed away from Bobby, wanting to release the sob pressing against his throat, choking him, suffocating him. But he couldn't cry.

Not yet.

Not now.

"He fought, Sam." Bobby's voice was rough from sorrow, his words tearing apart the quiet of the night that pressed close around them. "He fought until the end. Damn kid wouldn't give up. Always admired that about him. He always believed there was a way…."

Bobby's voice cracked, dying. Sam knew he was right; Dean had fought until the end—all-but challenging the Hellhounds to get him and drawing attention from Sam. But there was a part of Sam that knew Dean had accepted the truth weeks ago.

He remembered the moment, exactly. Before Ruby's Hail Mary plan. Before Indiana. Before the hallucinations.

The moment Dean had accepted his fate was the moment Sam had vowed he would get him out of it.

No matter what.

www

**Outside Monument, CO, one month ago**

They hadn't said anything to each other since Ruby left the motel room. There didn't seem to be space to speak around the words left lingering between them.

_Do you know how to fight a battle? You strike fast and you don't leave any survivors, so no one can go running to tell the boss. So next time, we go with my plan._

Dean had stared at the pouch she'd tossed him for a full minute before stuffing it deep into the duffel bag at the foot of his bed. Sam had watched as his brother rose stiffly from the bed, holding his wounded arm close to his body as he turned away, moving toward the bathroom.

The door shut; the sound of running water muted as it drifted into the room. Sam waited, his fingers running lazy circles around the base of his own leather pouch. A million thoughts assaulted him, none of them a clear beacon on how to approach Dean about what had just happened.

The people they'd risked everything for had died anyway, for nothing. Because Dean wouldn't sacrifice one life.

Sighing, Sam stood, moving to the window, peering out through the crack in the heavy curtain.

That's how he thought about it: _Dean_ wouldn't sacrifice one life.

Sam had been willing to do so. For the greater good. Hell, _Nancy_ had been willing to do so. But not Dean. Saving people. Hunting things. The motto had driven Dean when he was running on nothing but coffee and pain. Sam knew his brother was trying to center himself inside of a storm right now, he just wasn't sure what the biggest trigger was at the moment: the fact that Ruby had been right, the fact that those people had died…or the fact that Sam had known about Lilith and hadn't told him.

After what seemed like hours, Sam heard the water shut off. He turned, waiting, wanting the confrontation. The loss of all of those lives—lives of people who'd fought valiantly next to them—had turned sideways in his heart and he needed to talk about it.

He needed to talk to _Dean_ about it. He needed someone to tell him how he was supposed to feel. Because he didn't know.

Dean emerged from the bathroom, his hair standing in crazy, wet spikes, dressed in only jeans, a small towel gripped in his hand. Sam winced at the angry red skin surrounding the hole in Dean's shoulder. Nancy had done a good job field-dressing the wound, but it needed stitches. To the side of the open wound Sam saw a white, puckered scar where another bullet had entered some time back, blasted into Dean from a different gun—one that had been fired by Sam.

"Do you want me to patch that up for you?" Sam asked, his voice sounding too loud, too clear in the quiet of the room.

Without answering, Dean crossed to the bed, ripped back the covers with his good arm, and fell face-first onto the pillow. The bullet had passed through the flesh of his shoulder and Sam saw that the exit wound was larger than the entry, the skin around it torn, ragged and bruised, as if a fist had punched through a bag.

The bruise had traveled down Dean's side and colored his ribs. The only blessing was that it had stopped bleeding.

"Dean?"

"Shut the hell up, Sam." The sound of Dean's reply was muffled by the pillow, but the sting was no less sharp.

"Fine," Sam grunted and stomped past his brother's bed to the bathroom.

He'd lost track of the time. They'd been up for over forty-eight hours and his adrenalin had been on high alert for the majority of that time. He was tired, his body hurt, and there was an ache in his chest that no amount of pain medication would touch. It was the ache of loss that seemed to dog his steps—the ache that had haunted him in a very real way since the night Dean had climbed through the window of the apartment he shared with Jessica.

Sam turned on the shower, swearing under his breath at the lukewarm water. Stripping down, he washed quickly, bruises from the battle at the police station alighting across his back, shoulders, ribs. He stood naked before the sink and wiped the minimal steam from the small mirror.

_Lilith killed _everybody_._ _She slaughtered your precious little virgin plus a half a dozen other people. So after your big speech about humanity and war, turns out your plan was the one with the body count._

He blinked back at himself, remembering Ruby's words. Remembering how they seemed to cut into him, how they sliced Dean up before his eyes. How they sucked the air from the room. His eyes burned as he stared hard at his reflection.

Even _Ruby_ was afraid of Lilith. And Lilith wanted him dead. Saw him as competition.

"Why me?" he asked the steamy bathroom. Competition for a demon would not look good on a resume. He knew he should be more afraid; so why wasn't he? "What is so freakin' special about me?"

If he'd asked Dean, he'd get a suitably sarcasm-laden answer. He knew why Dean thought him special; he was Dean's brother. End of story. Their father had set Dean's path on this earth when his brother was four and for Dean, there'd been no veering.

But Lilith?

"Doesn't make sense." Sam sighed, wrapping a damp towel around his waist and heading out to the cooler air of the main room.

He heard the slow, deep breathing of his brother's sleep and knew he wasn't going to get the _talk it out_ moment he needed to ease the weight sitting like a rock in his chest. He wasn't even sure he knew what comprised that weight; there was too much to choose from. Not one boulder, but a pile of stones so tall that to remove one would undoubtedly send them all tumbling.

Sinking slowly down on the bed, Sam let his body uncoil, his spine crackling like bubble wrap. He didn't bother pulling down the comforter to lie on the sheets. The moment he lay back he was asleep, his dreams confusing, troubled images of dark smoke and innocent eyes.

When he woke, he felt stiff, sore. Trying to turn over, he realized his legs were tangled in a blanket. Blinking through his tangled hair, which had dried around his face while he slept, he worked to get his bearings.

Sitting up, he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. The blanket wrapped around his lanky body was from Dean's bed, he saw. And Dean's bed was now empty, a smear of blood left behind where his brother had been laying.

Digging at the crust that wove his lashes together, Sam looked around the small room, spying Dean sitting at the small table in front of the window, staring with a scowl at Sam's opened laptop. He was still shirtless and Sam saw that he now had an ice-filled towel draped over his wounded shoulder.

"Hey," Sam tried, clearing his throat.

Dean lifted his chin, pulling his eyes slowly away from the computer screen. "Hey."

"Time 's it?" Sam yawned.

Dean glanced at the large face of his watch. "'Bout 5:30. In the morning."

Sam's eyebrows bounced up. "What? What the hell are you doing awake?"

"It's Tuesday, Sam," Dean grumbled. "You slept like…twenty-four hours."

Sam looked down, staring at nothing. Sleep still tugged at him, slowing his thoughts, muddying his reaction time. "What about you?"

"Couldn't sleep anymore." Dean closed the lid of the laptop and pushed it away from him. "Got hungry. Plus…my shoulder was killing me."

Sam frowned at his brother's closed expression. "Why didn't you wake me up to help you?"

Dean bit the inside of his lip and shrugged. "You were beat, man. You needed to sleep."

He stood and Sam saw that he wasn't moving his arm away from his side.

"You want me to check it for you?"

Dean shook his head, moving to the dresser across the room. "Nah. I'm good."

He tossed the ice-filled towel on the dresser and Sam saw that he'd managed to fix a square of gauze over the wound on the back of his shoulder. He grabbed a small, brown paper bag from the top of the dresser and tossed it to Sam.

"What's this?"

"Sandwich. Eat up. Get dressed." Dean's eyes roamed Sam's face and his eyebrow quirked. "And for God's sake do something about that mop on top of your head."

Sam reached up instinctively to smooth his tangled hair. "We got a date or something?"

Dean moved to his bed and Sam looked again at the smear of blood on the sheets. If he'd insisted on wrapping Dean's shoulder before his brother fell asleep—

"Or something," Dean was saying as he dug into his duffel. Sam watched him fish out a black T-shirt, sniff it, grimace, and put it back. He grabbed another one—gray this time—and pulled it on carefully: right arm, head, left arm.

"We don't have to run, Dean," Sam said, rubbing his face, trying to get rid of the cobwebs. "The bags Ruby gave us—"

Dean made a noise half-way between a snort and a growl, rolling his shirts into one side of his duffel to make room for his flask, gun, and knife on the other side.

"What?" Sam asked, dropping his hands to his blanket-covered lap and staring at his brother. He'd been waiting for this.

"Not exactly ready to blindly accept party favors from your demon girlfriend, dude."

"She's not my—" Sam stopped, looking down, working to resist the bait. "She's trying to help us, Dean."

Dean stopped rolling his shirts and tipped his chin to the side, his eyes following. Sam felt his stomach tense in preparation for the barb that usually followed that look.

"Help _us_? Or help _you_?"

Sam frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Dean turned, tossing the shirt he'd been holding into the opening of the duffel. "You tell me, Sam. I mean, you knew about Lilith for weeks and didn't tell me. For all I know, you and Ruby have a whole secret club going on."

Sam balled up the blanket covering him and threw it onto the floor between their beds. _So it's door number three,_ Sam thought, standing up. He tightened the towel at his waist and gave his brother a withering look.

"You're an idiot."

Dean's lip bounced in an aborted snarl. "Yeah, well. Apparently that's a popular opinion around here," he said quietly.

Sam turned away, heading to the corner of the room where he'd dropped his own duffel, and crouched to grab some clean clothes. His stomach burned and his throat was tight. He always felt near tears when Dean wouldn't listen to him; it was an instinctive reaction that he had to fight to quell before he exposed how weak he felt in the face of his brother's ire.

"Hurry up," Dean snapped, zipping his bag closed. Sam stood and faced him. Dean was working a long-sleeved shirt up his left arm, trying to ease it over his wounded shoulder. "We've got a job."

"A job?" Sam replied, surprised.

Dean glanced up quickly, his eyes still hot. "Yes, Sam. A _job_. Get your ass moving."

"What kind of a job?" Sam bristled at the authoritative tone and purposely dug his heels in.

"Black Dog. Cheery little town called Hanging Hills, about a hundred miles east of here."

Sam arched an eyebrow. "A Black Dog? Dean, we thought we had a Black Dog once and it turned out to be Hellhounds."

Dean's eyes flashed with a strange emotion, one Sam wasn't easily able to place. It almost looked like…fear.

"It's legit," Dean bit out. "Dug up some intel on Hanging Hills. Not the first time there's been reports of a Black Dog there over the last hundred years or so."

Sam stood still a moment, regarding his brother, watching as a muscle in Dean's jaw flexed, a certain tell that there were words being held back.

"You want to talk about it?" Sam asked softly.

"I can catch you up in the car," Dean said, taking a quick breath as he pulled his shirt on the rest of the way. Sam saw beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip reflecting in the lamplight of the room.

"Not about the job…," Sam rubbed a hand through his tangled hair. "About…what happened."

"No."

Dean's reply was immediate and the look in his eyes left no room for argument. But Sam tried anyway.

"We did the best we could, Dean—"

"_Stop it,_ Sam," Dean snapped. "Just stop."

They stared at each other almost a full minute, Sam mentally leafing through retorts and platitudes that might offer some common ground, might ease the pain-tinged anger tightening the corners of his brother's eyes, and finding nothing. He relented, turning away and moving to the bathroom to clean up and get ready to head out.

It was always the way with them. Even after everything they'd been through. _Keep moving, keep fighting, don't let them see you, don't let them find you._ Dad had died for Dean. Dean had made a deal to save Sam. And yet there were walls between them too high and too well-built to easily scale.

As Sam loaded his duffel into the Impala's trunk next to his brother's he couldn't help but think that if they just stopped—even for a minute—to talk through what they managed to survive each day, it would be a lot easier to remember why they were fighting in the first place.

"Local paper in Hanging Hills reported three mysterious deaths in the last five days," Dean was saying as they pulled out of the motel lot, the pre-dawn quiet of the small town wrapping around them with a false sense of security.

_Then again,_ Sam thought, _maybe I'm the only one who needs to remember why we're fighting._

"Mysterious how?" Sam asked as he inhaled the sandwich Dean had given him. He was starving after sleeping for so many hours.

Dean rotated the wheel of the Impala one-handed, taking the first exit onto I-70 and heading east. Traffic was light this long before rush hour. Sam almost offered to drive and give his brother more time to rest his shoulder, but bit off the words. He knew Dean needed the distraction. And even one-handed, Dean was a better driver than most of the people on the planet.

"Local authorities got calls that a stray dog was seen in town, around houses, behind business, that sort of thing. But when they got there—"

"Let me guess, no dog," Sam broke in, warming to the hunt.

"Yahtzee."

A hunt was a mystery to solve. A puzzle to assemble. It was that aspect that drove Sam, kept him grounded through each job: finding the common thread that pulled everything together. For Dean, though, it was the solution. He didn't so much care _how_ it came together, Sam knew, as long as he was able to stop the evil in the end.

"So what makes you think it's _actually_ a Black Dog?"

"These people? That reported the stray?" Dean glanced at him before returning his eyes to the interstate. "Every one of them—dead."

Sam tipped his head. "How'd they die?"

"Fell," Dean said, his voice going tight for a moment as he shifted in his seat. "Two from a bridge that's under construction and one down an elevator shaft of an abandoned building."

"What the hell were they doing there?" Sam asked, intrigued.

"You got me," Dean shook his head. "But two witnesses say they saw them running from a dog."

"Straight to their deaths?"

Dean nodded. "According to the witnesses, it was as if the dog drove them to it."

"Did the paper ID the witnesses?" Sam asked.

"Well, here's where it goes a bit sideways," Dean said, glancing at him. "One was the reporter writing up the three articles. Someone named Ambrose. The other was some high school kid."

"Wait, the guy writing up about the deaths also saw the dog?"

"Hinky, right?"

"You could say that," Sam replied, frowning as he heard _Smoke On The Water_ emanating from the pocket of Dean's leather jacket, lying across the back seat.

"That'll be Bobby," Dean predicted.

"Why'd you call Bobby?" Sam asked, reaching over the seat to fish out the phone.

"Well, one," Dean said, darting a quick look in the rear view mirror as he changed lanes, "I wanted to let him know we hadn't blown up."

Sam felt himself go cold as he grabbed the phone and flipped it open. He hadn't thought about Bobby seeing that news report.

"And, two," Dean was saying as Bobby grumbled, "_Took you long enough_," in Sam's ear. "I asked him to look up some stuff on Black Dogs," Dean finished.

"Hey, Bobby," Sam said into the phone, holding up a finger to quiet his grim-faced brother. "You find anything?"

"_Since I didn't have anything else going on at _dawnthirty,_"_ Bobby said, his voiced laced with sarcasm, _"I made some calls."_ Sam could hear another phone ringing in the background. _"Hang on."_

"What's he saying?" Dean asked.

"Hang on," Sam repeated, his eyes catching a highway marker that told them they were eighty miles from Hanging Hills.

"_Okay, I'm back,"_ Bobby informed him. Sam pushed the 'speaker' button on the phone so he wouldn't have to repeat everything to Dean. _"There's some differing lore on Black Dogs. Some say it brings death, other say it warns of it. It's associated with electrical storms, supposed to be bigger than—"_

"Normal dogs, yeah, Bobby we know all of that," Dean interrupted, his voice gruff. "How do we kill the damn thing?"

"_You get up on the wrong side of the Impala this morning, boy?"_ Bobby grumbled back.

Sam heard another phone ringing in the background and Bobby swore under his breath. But this time he didn't leave them to answer it.

"Sorry, Bobby," Sam offered, trying to smooth the path between Dean's rough edges and Bobby's bristled feelings. "He's nursing a shoulder wound from the other day."

"_Bad?"_ Bobby asked, concern seeping into his voice.

"I'll live," Dean bit off.

"_Well, you _don't_ kill a Black Dog,"_ Bobby said, answering Dean's question. _"It's not the dog you have to worry about, it's whoever has summoned it. Whatever's controlling it."_

"What, like a demon?" Sam asked, frowning.

"_Could be anyone. Demon, human, witch. Black Dogs go hand-in-hand with crossroad deals."_ Bobby's voice held a sigh and Sam couldn't help but steal a glance at Dean. _"You get rid of whoever summoned the damn thing, you get rid of the dog."_

"So…the _dog_ wouldn't necessarily be killing people," Dean surmised, taking an exit off of the interstate heavy with semi-trucks and following a side road Sam didn't even know the name of. He wasn't terribly concerned, however. Dean had been born with an internal navigation system that rarely, if ever, got them lost.

"_Hell, the dog could be warning people. Says here,"_ Sam heard Bobby flipping pages of a book, _"that to see the Black Dog the first time means joy, a second time means misfortune. Seeing the Black Dog a third time is said to be a death omen."_

Sam shared a glance with his brother. "So," he postulated, still looking at Dean, "maybe someone's using the lore as cover? Using the town's history…blaming these recent deaths on the dog?"

"_Could be,"_ Bobby allowed. _"Someone would have to know a lot about the lore, though."_

"Yeah," Dean said, grimacing. "Hey, thanks, Bobby."

Bobby was silent a moment. _"You got any leads on Bela and the Colt?"_

Sam swallowed. This time he didn't dare look at Dean. Their silence was Bobby's answer.

"_That's what I figured,"_ the older hunter grumbled. _"If this _is_ a demon—"_

"We'll figure it out," Dean interjected, his voice a low growl.

"_Yeah, well. Keep in touch, boys,"_ Bobby asked after pausing long enough to let them know he didn't appreciate Dean's tone, but would roll with it.

"We will," Sam promised, then closed the phone, tucking it into the glove box of the Impala.

They drove in silence for several minutes as the sun dominated the gray dawn, glinting off of the chrome edging the Impala's windshield and making Sam squint. He'd lost his sunglasses months ago. Reaching up, he flipped his visor down, then reached over to do the same for Dean, knowing that his brother wouldn't be able to reach his wounded arm up that high.

"Bobby's right, you know," Sam said, keeping his voice low, quiet.

Dangerous energy radiated off of his brother. The storm Sam had felt building inside Dean back at the motel was only growing in strength and was fueled by loss, pain, and frustration. Sam knew that he would be at the epicenter if Dean released the fierce control he used to clamp down on his emotions. He unconsciously separated further from Dean, pressing his back against the door as he chose is next words.

"Without the Colt, we really don't have a lot of chance to fight something as powerful as Lilith."

A muscle flexed in Dean's jaw, but he remained quiet. Sam pressed on; if he wanted to talk about what had happened back in Monument it was clear he would have to push Dean into it.

"Unless…y'know, we see if Ruby has any—"

"_No_. No way."

"Dean, she's done nothing but help us," Sam protested.

"She's a _demon_, Sam."

"Who warned us about Lilith—and risked her life to save us from that demon cloud back at the police station!"

Without a word, Dean pulled over to the shoulder of the deserted road, gravel grinding under the wheels of the powerful Chevy. Sam braced himself against the dash as dust rose up around them when Dean applied the brakes. For a moment neither of them moved. Sam took a slow breath, looking at the rows of pine trees that flanked the quiet Colorado road.

"Dean—"

Reaching across his body, Dean opened the door with his right hand, shoving it wide with his foot. Sam watched as he climbed out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rock the car. Taking a breath to steady himself, Sam wrapped his fingers around the door handle, trying to determine the best approach.

He didn't like the feeling that wrapped around his heart—the feeling that he was in trouble. That he'd let his brother down. But the bottom line was, he'd _purposely_ not told Dean when he'd found out about Lilith. He knew Dean was pissed about that; he knew Dean hated being kept in the dark.

But Sam was an adult; Dean wasn't going to be able to protect Sam forever.

_Especially with a death sentence hanging over his head,_ Sam thought dismally, exiting the car and moving slowly around to rest his back pockets on the hood of the Impala, watching Dean's back as his brother stood, facing the trees, the toe of his boot digging into the gravel shoulder of the road as if snuffing a cigarette butt.

The sun had turned the sky to tin above the treetops, tossing deceptive shadows along the tree-flanked road. Sam felt a real storm building around them, could smell the rain rolling in from the west.

"You were really going to let her kill that girl." Dean's voice sounded stale, the edges of the words hot against the cool air of the morning.

Sam took a breath, relieved to have this opening. _Any_ opening. The myriad of reasons why Dean was pissed didn't matter; the one he chose to talk about did.

"I thought…I just thought it was the best way to save all those people," Sam tried, the words tasting sour to him as they were released.

"How'd we get here, Sam?" Dean asked him, still not turning around.

Sam wanted to see his brother's face; the sound of Dean's voice dug into him, offering no quarter. He didn't sound mad, he didn't sound forgiving. He simply sounded…tired. Tired and scared.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked softly.

Dean rotated slightly, glancing over his shoulder toward Sam, but still not really looking at him. "When did it become okay in that head of yours to _kill_ someone to save our hides?"

Sam swallowed, his heart heating in resistance of the disappointment and disapproval heavy in his brother's tone. "Dean...you know better than anyone that sometimes you have to make sacrifices—"

Dean turned so fast the gravel beneath his boots shot to the side like mini missiles. Sam drew back slightly.

"How is that the same, Sam?" Dean snapped. "How is that even in the _vicinity_ of the same?"

Anger burst hot and fast behind Sam's eyes, drying his mouth and coiling in his gut. "I just meant—"

"I don't want to hear what you _meant_," Dean shot back.

"Well, you're going to!" Sam roared suddenly, pushing away from the Impala's hood and balancing on the balls of his feet. He was done feeling as if he had to make up for some wrong-doing. "Jesus Christ, Dean, you just don't get it, do you?"

If he hadn't been so angry, he might've seen the moment Dean shut off, the moment the wall came down and Sam lost his _in_. Access to Dean's feelings was denied before Sam even started his explanation, but he was too juiced up to notice.

Dean settled back on his heels, tipping his chin slightly to look at Sam through lowered lids. "Why don't you explain it to me, Sam?"

"I shouldn't have to," Sam spat. "_Dad_ did. For years. In wars, you make sacrifices for the greater good. You have to be willing to make the hard choices—there are acceptable losses."

"Acceptable losses," Dean repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. "Like the life of an innocent virgin? Who was only involved in this damn war because _we_ just so happened to be there?" He flicked the fingers of his right hand in the space separating them.

"She was willing—" Sam tried.

"Screw willing," Dean broke in, pushing Sam backward in a burst of frustration. "She had no fucking _clue_ what she was volunteering for. She just wanted to save her friends."

Sam took a breath, feeling the heat of tears at the backs of his eyes. "I didn't _want_ to kill her, Dean."

Dean tilted his head in disbelief. "Really? 'Cause you sure seemed gung-ho back there before I told you I had another plan."

"I just didn't want all those other people to die," Sam continued, working to swallow the emotion that built in his throat. "I didn't…I didn't want _you_ to die."

Dean shook his head slowly, his eyes sad in his tense face. "You should've trusted me, Sam."

"I did! I do!" Sam protested. "But…we were trapped, and—"

"And we got out of there. Like we always do. We fought the bastards off—"

"And then Lilith showed up and killed them all anyway!" Sam shouted.

Dean closed his mouth with a click, whatever else he'd been about to say seeming to shrivel up inside of him as his eyes bled helpless anger.

"I know you don't want to hear it, Dean," Sam pressed, his stomach burning, his throat dry. "But Ruby was right. Lilith isn't like that yellow-eyed demon. And he was bad enough."

Dean looked away and Sam watched the muscle coil and roll along his brother's jaw line.

"And for whatever reason? She's gunning for me. We haven't fought a war like this before," he pointed out, hearing his voice shake. He looked down at the gravel, watching the shadows grow across the ground as the sun fought its way upward. "We've never had them coming after us. Not like this."

"I know," Dean said softly.

"So…I just think…maybe…," Sam swallowed. He licked his lips. Then he lifted his head and looked hard at his brother, willing Dean's eyes to meet his. "Maybe we accept that the old rules don't apply."

"I won't, Sam," Dean said. "I _can't_."

Sam looked down again as Dean continued.

"There's no way it's ever going to be okay for me to kill some _innocent_ person for the chance that it might save a bunch of others."

"_You_ did it," Sam replied, his voice thick with frustration.

"What?"

Sam raised his eyes, letting the pain that had torn him up each night since Dean saved him, since he came back from the dead, show plainly. He saw Dean flinch at the sight.

"You did it to save me," he clarified. "If we don't find a way out of this deal…you're gonna leave me here. Alone in this mess. Because you couldn't live with me dead."

Sam heard the bitterness swimming in his words, but didn't care. He saw Dean's face close off, his expression turning stoic, and it pissed him off. He wanted his brother to feel the fire that turned in his belly, he wanted Dean's heart to twist in his chest and ache with each back-beat because there was no way out.

He wanted this choice Dean had made _for_ him…_because of_ him…to be killing Dean as surely as it was killing Sam.

"And if you're not here," Sam continued, "I gotta figure out some way to fight her."

Dean moved forward, reached up with both hands and grabbed the front of Sam's shirt. "No, Sammy," he said tightly. "Not _that_ way."

"It would have worked," Sam argued, not knowing exactly why he was pressing the issue except that it was forcing a reaction from Dean.

"You don't know that!" Dean shook him slightly and Sam watched him go pale, sweat beading once more on his forehead as he dropped his left arm and pulled himself upright. "_Our_ way worked."

Sam pressed his lips together, trying to stop his chin from quivering. "No, it didn't," he said softly. "It just delayed the inevitable."

The words burned; he was voicing a secret fear that the same would be true two months down the road when Dean's time ran out.

Dean looked at him a moment, then turned away. Sam watched his shoulders shift with a deep breath.

"There are consequences to everything, Sam," he said, his voice low. Sam felt a shiver run parallel to his spine: Dean sounded _exactly_ like their father. "No matter what choice you make, there are _always_ consequences." He lifted his face and Sam saw that his eyes suddenly looked ancient and weary. "And you're the one that's gotta decide if you can live with them."

"You can live with _this_?" Sam asked, his voice choked. "You can live with…with Henricksen dead? And Nancy dying _anyway_? With Lilith winning that battle?"

Dean looked down and with his right hand he pulled his left arm close to his body. "She didn't win," he said, not touching the rest of Sam's question. He turned his eyes down the length of empty road, away from the Impala. "You're still alive."

Sam sank back on the Impala's hood, marveling for a moment at the path his brother's mind followed to get to a point where he could justify his choices. Dean headed back to the driver's seat of the Impala. Sam felt the car shift with his brother's weight, but he stayed put. He wasn't sure how to feel about what Dean had said.

They'd saved the people of the town. Lilith's demons hadn't won that round. But Henricksen, Nancy, all of the people who'd help them battle the demons—they were all gone. A loss of the innocent he'd been trying to save, a loss of a new ally…and Dean, while rocked, had decided to live with those consequences because Sam was still alive.

He jumped when Dean honked the horn to get his attention. Standing, he turned and faced the car, looking at his brother through the glass for a moment. Dean was pale, the skin around his mouth and eyes tense, his left arm cradled against his side, but Sam could see that he was ready to go.

Ready to take on another job. Ready to keep moving.

Anything to keep from focusing on the consequences he _couldn't_ live with.

www

**Outside Hanging Hills, CO, later that same day**

"Freakin' storm," Dean grumbled, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he gripped it with his right hand. The wipers beat across the Impala's windshield, but didn't seem to be doing much to assuage the flow of rain or clear their view.

"You want me to drive?" Sam offered for the thirtieth time.

"You want me to hit you?"

Sam sighed. He should have taken the keys, not given Dean a choice in the matter. He saw the sweat rolling in teardrops down the side of Dean's face, and knew that in addition to his shoulder wound, his brother was at least as tired and hungry as he was.

The storm had hit just after they'd refueled outside of Limon and had grown in intensity over the last several miles. With nothing to block the wind or slow the driving rain across the open prairie, the Impala and whatever other vehicles unfortunate to be on the road that morning had been slammed by the powerful surge.

"You get that paper at the gas station?" Dean asked as they passed a faded sign reading _Hanging Hills, 3 miles_.

"Yeah." Sam opened to the classifieds.

Squatting was a money-saving, off-the-grid trick they'd picked up from John. The key was to find a place that had been on the market long enough to be standing empty, but not too long that the modern conveniences had been shut off. They were rarely that lucky, but in a place the size of Hanging Hills, Sam doubted they'd be any more fortunate with the motel selection.

He found three possible locations. Using the GPS on his phone, he directed Dean through the storm. The first had cars parked on the street in front, the second had lights on inside, but the third was down a rutted, flooding dirt road. Weeds grew up around the For Sale sign and the windows were dark and boarded over.

"Don't think we're going to get a shower or hot meal here." Sam sighed, peering out through the rain as Dean stopped near the front porch.

"You want a shower?" Dean asked looking over with a quirked eyebrow. "Step outside."

"Very funny."

Hunched in instinctive but useless protection from the storm, they ran in tandem up to the porch. The paint on the front of the house was peeling, and there was no a lock box on the door knob. Dean crouched low to pick the lock, an effort made more difficult by the darkness from the storm. Sam peered through the windows, seeing nothing immediately suspicious.

"Got it," Dean grunted, straightening.

He pulled his Colt from his back waistband and nodded at Sam who lifted his own gun from his pocket. Pushing the door open, Dean covered Sam as he entered first, checking the entry way, and looking up the stairs. Within minutes they'd cleared the house and were meeting back up in the main living room.

"Place is empty," Sam reported needlessly.

"Find any beds?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head. "Just a room with a bunch of boxes and old newspapers. Looks like we got this couch and what used to be a table and chairs in the kitchen."

"Power's out," Dean said, flicking a light switch to illustrate. "No running water."

"Swell," Sam sighed, rolling his neck. "Let's get this done and go find us a Hilton."

"Sounds like a plan," Dean nodded, turning back toward the door. "Break up the table and chairs."

"Break them up?" Sam asked, confused.

Dean paused at the door. "There's a fireplace, dude. You wanna get warm? We're gonna have to _Wagon Train_ this bitch."

Sam huffed a laugh as Dean went back out to the car to grab the bags. He followed orders, using his feet to leverage and then break up the table and chairs, stacking the wood next to the fireplace in the main room. By the time Dean closed the front door with a groan, Sam was nearly dry and had started a fire using the furniture and classified section of the newspaper as kindling.

"Can't believe it's not even noon," Dean grumbled, dropping down on the sagging couch, rainwater running from his hair down his face and pooling beneath his feet.

"Dude, you're soaking the couch," Sam protested.

"Sor-ry," Dean said, stretching out the word. "Didn't realize this was the good furniture."

He stood and began to peel off his long-sleeved shirt as Sam said, "If you want to sit on something other than the floor, that's all we got."

"Whatever," Dean groaned as he dropped his wet, long-sleeved shirt on the floor and started working his way slowly out of the wet T-shirt. "If that bastard Groves wasn't already dead, I'd shoot him on principle."

Sam looked up from stoking the fire. "Dean!"

Dean glanced over. "What? Too soon?"

"Dude." Sam shook his head, feeding more wood on the fire after getting a glance at Dean's pale face.

"The guy _shot me_, Sam."

"Yeah, I _know_ that."

Dean hissed as he rolled the wet sleeve from his shoulder, dropping the T-shirt on top of the long-sleeved shirt. "Hurts like a mother, too."

Sighing, Sam got up and moved over to the bags Dean had brought inside. "Go sit."

"Thought I'd ruin the furniture," Dean sassed.

Glancing over his shoulder at his irritating brother, Sam dug into his duffel bag and pulled out a towel and a pair of sweats and tossed them at Dean. "Change, dry off, and sit. I'm gonna find the meds we stashed here from the last time you got shot."

Dean muttered something under his breath as Sam turned away and he was pretty sure he was glad he hadn't heard it. He pulled out the canvass pouch he'd turned into a first aid kit several years ago. Inside he found a bottle of Cipro, some Tylenol 3, and the pain pills Jo had given Dean nearly a year ago.

They'd picked up a couple of pre-wrapped sandwiches and chips at the gas station. He looked through Dean's bag, but didn't find any water. He couldn't remember seeing any bottles of water in the car, either, cursing himself for not having the foresight to better prepare.

He grabbed Dean's flask, tapped two antibiotics and one of the pain pills into his palm and turned back toward the fire. Dean sat bare-chested, dressed in Sam's sweat pants, the towel and his wet clothes hanging over a jury-rigged drying rack made up of andirons and pieces of a chair.

"Here," Sam thrust the medicine out toward his brother. "We don't have any water. Sorry."

"This is better," Dean said, taking the flask and swallowing the meds.

"I doubt it, but we'll deal with that later." Sam crouched next to Dean, setting the first aid kit next to him.

The storm had darkened mid-day to night and their main source of light came from the cobweb-dusted fireplace. The wood floor of the main room was scuffed and scratched, a musty-smelling braided rug digging into Sam's knees. Two tall windows flanked the fireplace and lightning flashed like camera work, briefly illuminating Dean's pale face and the angry red of his shoulder.

Sam pulled the small flashlight from the first aid kit and shone it on Dean's wound. Setting the light to the side to help illuminate his work, he pulled the wet gauze patches from either side of his shoulder, wincing at how hot Dean's skin was to the touch.

"Tried to call Bobby when I moved the car," Dean was saying, his tight voice evidence to how much it hurt for Sam to touch him. "No reception. Missed a couple calls, though."

"Yeah?" Sam asked, wetting another gauze patch with antiseptic. "From who?"

"Bobby," Dean said, jerking slightly and stifling a groan as Sam dabbed at the swollen skin with the disinfectant. "Letting us know he'd looked into the newspaper dude and he's sketchy on multiple levels."

"Demon?" Sam asked, narrowing his eyes at the back of Dean's shoulder.

It was a little too late for stitches, and the tears in Dean's skin were swollen and bruised enough as it was. Sticking a needle into that mess to close up a wound that wasn't even bleeding anymore would just be needless torture. Unless he could knock Dean out, he wasn't going to go there.

But he had to make sure the wound was well and truly clean, if nothing else. Wishing fleetingly for simple soap and water, he rested a gauze patch beneath the wound and nudged at Dean's hand holding the flask. Dean took another swig, closing his eyes as Sam lifted the antiseptic and poured across the opened skin.

"Sonofbitchjesus_fucking_christ," Dean swore, his breath eking out in shallow bursts through clenched teeth. Raising a shaking hand, he took another swig from the flask and let out a low groan slowly. His lips trembled around his next words. "Could. Be. Demon." He took a quick breath. "Bobby…said the dead people were connected…."

"How?" Sam asked, applying the same treatment to the front of Dean's shoulder.

"Don't…know…." Dean's right fist knotted into the loose folds of his sweatpants and Sam watched as sweat rolled down his brother's temple and along his jaw line. "Son of a _bitch_ that hurts," Dean gasped weakly.

"Breathe," Sam said in a low voice. "Almost done, man. Just breathe."

He waited until he heard Dean pull in a shaking breath before he pressed the antiseptic-soaked gauze to the wound. Dean pushed out his lips, pressing his eyes tightly closed.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

"Other call," Dean continued, rather than answering the question, "was from Ballard."

"Ballard?" Sam repeated, surprised. "How did she—"

Dean shook his head, cutting Sam off. "Word travels fast, I guess. Henricksen is—_was_…," Dean paused, clearing his throat, "a tenacious bastard. Probably called her more than once to find out how she let us get away."

Sam carefully dabbed antibiotic ointment on and around the swollen, torn skin, ignoring the spastic flinching of his brother's muscles. He knew Dean wanted to pull away, but was fighting to keep still. He hurried to press and tape a gauze patch over the opening, then wrapped an Ace bandage around Dean's shoulder, keeping pressure on the bandages, but not completely immobilizing his brother's arm.

"What did she want?" Sam asked pushing himself stiffly to his feet and moving to a closet he'd seen at back of the room. He was hoping for a blanket or sheet or something. It was empty.

"Said she wouldn't believe it until she saw a body."

"The place blew up," Sam said, turning back to regard Dean's form, hunched in front of the fire, staring into the flames. "There…wouldn't be any bodies."

"Still," Dean said listlessly, the pain having tapped his reserves. "Kinda nice to have someone believe in us, y'know? Someone on our side."

Sam looked down. "Yeah," he said quietly, making his way to the couch and sitting on the arm.

"I'm gonna miss that smug bastard," Dean said suddenly.

It was on the tip of Sam's tongue to ask _who_ when he suddenly realized he knew: Henricksen. The man had twisted Dean up worse than anyone outside of John had ever been able to. Henricksen had been _Dean_ standing on the other side of the law. They'd had to run hard from him only because the man had gotten inside his brother's head in more ways than one.

And when the FBI Agent realized – _finally_ realized – the truth, Sam had seen something in Dean's eyes he hadn't seen since they'd found John: hope. The possibility of an ally. Maybe even a friend.

"Yeah," Sam repeated, not knowing what else to say.

Dean pulled his eyes slowly from the fire to look at Sam with such profound sadness that Sam had to catch his breath. He needed a warning when Dean's walls slipped free; he wasn't prepared for such raw emotion in a glance.

"Would've been nice to know that someone had your back, y'know?"

Sam pulled his eyebrows together. "Henricksen?"

Dean pushed out his lower lip, nodding as he glanced down. "He wouldn't have quit you, Sam. He'd have found a way to protect you from Lilith."

The tears came hot, fast, pooling in his eyes before Sam could stop them. "When you're…gone…you mean."

Dean didn't answer. Didn't move.

"Dean, I know what I said back there—"

"It's okay, Sam," Dean said softly.

"No, it's not," Sam shook his head. "I was just…I was mad. We're gonna find a way, man. I'm not gonna let you go to Hell."

Taking a breath, Dean used his right arm to push himself to his feet. Sam felt his brows pull together in reaction to the low groan Dean let leak out as he reached out and balanced himself against the fireplace. Moving to stand in front of a window, Dean rested his forearm against the wooden frame, peering out into the storm.

Lightning flashed with a thunder chaser loud enough to rattle Sam's teeth. Dean leaned his forehead against the glass and Sam heard him chuckle.

"What's so funny?"

"You remember the last time we hid out in a house this run down?" Dean asked, not turning around.

Sam frowned, thinking back. "You were still in school, right?"

"Yeah." Dean's breath clouded the window for a brief moment. "Dad was in one of his _go to ground_ moods, and the place was a pit."

"I remember," Sam nodded, chuckling. "A raccoon under the sink…."

"A hole in the roof all the way through the bedroom floor," Dean added.

"And Dad made us stay there for a week," Sam grumbled, a grin pulling the side of his mouth high. "I hated every minute of it."

"Not _every_ minute," Dean reminded him, rolling his head slightly on the glass to meet Sam's eyes. "You remember what you found in the bedroom closet?"

Sam pulled his brows together, confused for a moment, until another flash of lightning illuminated Dean's lascivious grin.

"Dude, I totally forgot about that," Sam laughed. "My first porn mag."

"You were freakin' hilarious, man," Dean chuckled, looking back through the window. "Trying to hide it from me and Dad, blushing every time you thought we'd caught on."

"And you knew the whole time," Sam nodded, looking down with a tremulous smile. It was moments like this – the small joys of being family – that made the depleting hourglass that was his brother's life hurt that much more.

"'Course I knew," Dean said, his voice a shrug. "I'm your big brother. Comes with the job."

"Plus," Sam arched a brow and glanced up at the back of Dean's head, "you were biding your time until you could swipe it."

"Dude," Dean replied, still looking out into the darkened day, "it was _porn_. I had plans—"

He bit his words off so quickly that Sam stood from his perch on the arm of the couch.

"Dean?"

"Holy shit, Sam," Dean breathed. "I just saw it."

"What?" Sam drew close to his brother, peering over Dean's shoulder into the storm. "What did you see?"

Dean pressed his forehead harder against the window. "The dog. Big damn thing."

"You saw the Black Dog?" Sam replied, cupping his hands around his eyes to shield his sight from the firelight. "Where—"

But Dean was already moving toward the duffel bag and his gun.

"Dean, wait!"

"Damn thing is circling the house, Sam," Dean growled, checking his clip and heading toward the door.

"You can't kill this thing," Sam reminded him, following. "Bobby said we have to get the source!"

Dean pulled the door open and the rain slammed into both of them with drenching force. The wind whipped small branches from trees and scattered leaves across the paint-chipped porch. Sam shouldered Dean aside and pushed the door shut. They stared at each other in the dim light, gasping from the force of the storm, water peppering their faces with droplets.

"We have to kill the source," Sam repeated.

"Why is it _here_?" Dean demanded. "Thought it was going after people from Hanging Hills."

"We'll find out," Sam said, a cold knot forming in his stomach. "We'll figure it out. Like we always do—together."

Dean blinked at him and a shadow shifted in his eyes, something close to doubt shaking hands with suspicion.

"Why didn't you tell me about her, Sam?" Dean asked suddenly.

"What?" Sam asked, taken aback at the shift in topics. Dean was swaying a bit, the gun hanging loosely from his right hand, the bandages on his left shoulder darkened to gray by the spray of storm. "What are you talking about?"

"Lilith," Dean spat, lifting his gun-heavy hand to wipe the rainwater from his face. "I shoulda known, man. You shoulda _told_ me."

Sam stepped away from the door. He'd thought he'd wanted to push it; he thought he'd wanted to talk about it. But he wasn't ready, he realized. He didn't know why, but he wasn't ready to go there with his brother right now. Not with Dean swaying from pain and exhaustion in front of his eyes.

"Listen," Sam said softly, placing a gentle hand on Dean's elbow. "We're beat. Let's get some sleep until this storm blows over and then we'll figure out what's going on with this Black Dog, okay?"

Dean looked askance at him, but stayed silent. Sam edged him back toward the couch, guiding him as he dropped heavily onto the cushions. Sighing, Sam moved toward the fire and stoked it with more pieces of table. When it was crackling and popping with bright heat, he turned back to see Dean slumped back on the beat-up couch, looking as worn and ragged as the furniture he sat upon.

Cupping his brother's neck, Sam eased Dean down to lie on the couch, slipping the gun from Dean's fingers and setting it within reach on the ground. He dug around in the duffel until he found a flannel shirt to cover Dean with, then sat on the braided rug, ate his sandwich, leaving the chips for when he had more to wash them down with than whiskey, and watched Dean sleep.

Why _hadn't_ he said something? Why hadn't that been the _first_ _thing_ he'd said when Dean had pulled him out of that nest of witches? Why was he so resistant to saying anything _now_?

_I don't want to die…I don't want to go to hell._

Sam shivered and looked toward the fire.

Dean had always been his one constant. All his life, his big brother had been there for him. When the world blew up around him, when right flipped sideways and turned into wrong, when everyone he knew became strangers before his eyes, Dean had been there standing between him and the darkness. Dean had been the hand at his back pushing him forward, the protective arm keeping him from harm, the jester, the thief, the parent, the brother.

And then he'd taken it one step too far: he'd sold his soul. He'd made one sacrifice too many, and Sam didn't know how to accept it. _Wouldn't_ accept it. Dean was going to die and Sam was running out of ways to stop it, running out of ideas to follow.

Staring down the barrel of that threat, some random Big Bad Force rising in the west hadn't really rattled him. Not until the police station. Not until she killed all of those people just to get to him.

Suddenly restless, Sam stood and crept soundlessly from the room. He made his way to the small bedroom at the top of the stairs where he'd seen the boxes and old newspapers. The storm seemed to be slightly tapering, allowing gray light to filter in through the curtainless windows. Shining his flashlight over the boxes he peered inside.

Books and magazines filled two of them. A collection of framed pictures and nick-nacks were in the third. Someone had probably been pretty disappointed when they reached their new house and realized this memorabilia had been left behind. Shifting his attention to the piles of print, he sat on top of a box and began flipping through them.

The first he picked up was dated June of 1994. He glanced over the headline, set it aside and picked up another, also from '94. Not really sure what he was looking for – if anything – he continued to scan through the stacks of papers reading small excerpts of the births, deaths, elections, county fairs, marriages, and scandals that all affected Hanging Hills, Colorado.

The by-line for the front page story switched from someone named Steven Darius to a Nester Ambrose in 1988.

"Ambrose," Sam whispered to himself, remembering Dean's run-down of the case earlier in the car.

Frowning, he began to look through the papers from '88 to '94 to find other articles by the same reporter. He found one from October of 2003 that had him sitting up straight and breathing out in wonder. The cover picture was a familiar rendering, one he'd seen before when they were looking into the possibility of a Black Dog back in Mississippi.

The article covered the lore of the Black Dog, painting the creature not as an omen of death or portent of danger, but as a remorseless killer who knew your sins, found you out, and punished you mercilessly. It called up unexplained deaths in the area as far back as the Civil War, citing misdeeds and misbehavior of the victims as the trigger for the Dog's vicious form of justice.

"A little light reading?"

Sam jumped, slipping from his perch on the box and dropping the flashlight into the dust surrounding him. "Jesus!"

"No, just me," Dean drawled, leaning against the doorway. "You let me fall asleep."

Sam stood, breathing shakily, and dusted himself off. "You were beat."

Dean rolled away from the doorframe and moved further into the room. Sam realized that the light outside had increased and the sound of the rain had lessened. He'd lost track of how long he'd been up in the small room reading through old newspapers. His hands were covered in dust and newsprint and he had a crick in his neck.

"Find anything?" Dean asked.

He'd pulled on the shirt Sam had covered him with, but hadn't buttoned it. He was carrying his gun loosely in his right hand. As he turned into the beam from Sam's flashlight, the bruises on his torso were visible. But he was moving easier and his eyes were clear and bright. Sam decided the nap had done him some good.

"Yeah." Sam tossed the newspaper with the Black Dog article onto a box near Dean. "This Ambrose guy's had a hard-on for Black Dogs for awhile."

Dean turned the paper with the barrel of his gun and his eyes scanned the article. "Kinda created his own version of the lore, though."

"Yeah," Sam nodded, still rifling through the papers. "And listen to this. Three deaths in 1994 went unexplained until _Ambrose_ attributed them to the Black Dog due to the victims' lewd behavior."

Dean's mouth folded down into a sarcastic grin. "Lewd behavior, huh? Guess that explains why I saw the damn thing."

"Whatever," Sam shook his head, tossing the newspaper he'd been reading on top of a pile of others. "Guys like him make me sick, playing judge and jury."

"'94?" Dean looked over, his head tilted in thought. "That's over ten years ago. What's happened around here between then and now?"

"I don't know," Sam shook his head, casting about the room. "Couldn't find another paper newer than that."

"How 'bout we head into town, grab some food, do some poking around?"

Sam eyed his brother's arm, watching as Dean kept it close to his side. "You sure you can?"

"Dude, I'm fine," Dean shook his head. "Besides, it's almost dark out. Again." He moved past Sam to exit the room, his mouth pulled into a side grin. "Best time to poke around is at night."

"And you're hungry," Sam guessed, rolling his eyes at Dean's brand of humor.

"And I'm hungry."

www

(continued...)

**Playlist:**

_Smoke on the Water _by Deep Purple


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** They're not mine. More's the pity. All locations are fabricated and the lore in this story has been manipulated to suit my nefarious, storytelling purposes.

**Spoilers:** Season 3. The majority is set after 3.12, _Jus In Bello_. But there are spoilers for all of Season 3.

* * *

><p>(Part Two...)<p>

**Hanging Hills, night**

"What's this?" Sam caught the brown paper bag Dean tossed his way as he climbed back into the Impala.

"Supplies," Dean answered cryptically, firing up the engine. He still wasn't using his arm much, but he looked much better than he had before they'd stopped at the abandoned house.

Sam dug through the bag and pulled out sandwiches, beef jerky, bottles of water, Peanut M&Ms, Twizzlers, sidewalk chalk, and tapered candles.

"What, no beer?" Sam teased.

"Nag, nag, nag," Dean muttered, opening the Twizzlers and slipping one red rope between his lips. He bit off one end, allowing the other to hang from his lips like a cigarette before pulling out onto the road. "We have everything else we need to trap, summon, or exorcise a demon. Just needed the chalk and candles."

"What if it's not a demon?" Sam asked.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it."

"Speaking of bridges," Sam said, shifting the bag to the back and pulling out two water bottles, handing one to his brother, "I stole some wireless Internet connection while you were in the convenience store."

"Atta boy," Dean grinned, downing half his bottle in one gulp.

"The bridge where the first two people died is about half a mile from here."

"Lead on, MacDuff."

Sam glanced at him, wry amusement twisting his lips.

"What?" Dean shrugged one-armed and rotated the wheel in the direction Sam indicated. "I read."

"Shakespeare?"

"You know how much _sex_ is in Shakespeare's stuff, man?" Dean retorted. "It's like…ancient porn."

As Sam shook his head with a tolerant grin, Dean balanced the wheel with his knee, reaching over and turning on the radio. Skynyrd's _Mr. Saturday Night Special_ blared from the speakers and he sat back with a happy sigh. Giving into the inevitable and vowing he'd be driving next – _and_ picking the music – Sam directed Dean to the blocked-off road and construction markers.

The rain had stopped, leaving the road wet and the air cool and smelling like clean grass and earth. Clouds were slowly parting to expose the high, white light of a slim crescent moon, stars barely burning through the night.

"There," Sam pointed to a shadowed steel structure, the center lane torn out and turned to rubble.

The gorge it spanned dropped off quickly and even from the car Sam felt his stomach lurch at the height from which those two victims had fallen. Sam had never really been one to feel squeamish about heights, but this was _really_ high. It was the sort of high that had one feeling an inexorable need to jump.

"Let's go check it out," Dean said, grabbing his Colt and stuffing it into his jacket pocket before shutting off the car.

Shoving his sudden sense of vertigo down into his gut, Sam grabbed the EMF from the glove box and followed his brother through the rubble of construction to the bridge.

"Getting anything?" Dean's breath puffed out in front of him in tiny clouds. The air was chilly, but not too cold. Their canvass jackets were enough protection for the moment.

"Nothing," Sam shook his head. "Flatline."

"Rain would've washed any trace of sulfur away," Dean muttered kicking at a pile of small, concrete cast-offs. He looked up, his eyes skimming the dark edge of the horizon. "What do you—"

Sam saw the figure a split second before Dean, but it was Dean who moved first.

"Hey!"

Following his brother gingerly across the broken road to the steel tresses that still crossed the deep valley, Sam alternated between watching where they stepped and keeping his eye on the figure balanced precariously on the outer edge of the steel girder, dangerously balanced over the deep crevasse.

"Hey, man, don't!" Dean called out, reaching with his left hand to support himself and his right toward the figure – a boy, Sam realized now. "You don't want to do this," Dean's voice softened.

"Yeah. I do." The boy's voice was ancient, rough, and filled with latent tears. "I _really_ do."

"No, man," Dean shook his head, stepping closer, his boots balanced on the steel beam, the road having given way to the valley below.

Sam felt his heart jump to his nose, his stomach falling flat. He wanted to reach out and pull Dean back, but he held still. Dean was closer to the kid now, and was the best chance they had of pulling him back to safety. Sliding the EMF into his pocket, Sam stayed tense, his body alerted to what they needed to do next.

Speaking low, his voice almost conversational in its care, Dean continued to speak to the kid. "This isn't an answer to anything. I mean it. No matter how bad it is."

"You don't know bad," the kid replied. Sam could see him clearer now. He was probably sixteen or seventeen, bone-thin, acne-pocked skin, shaggy brown hair. He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and Converse sneakers, worn through at the side. His hands were dirty, the fingertips gripping the girder torn and bleeding, knuckles bruised. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Maybe I don't know _your_ bad, but I do know bad," Dean replied, stepping closer still, and leaning against the trestle just below the kid's hand.

The kid looked over at him and Sam saw Dean's wall crash into place, practically heard the slam of it. He glanced at the kid and saw why: the boy's eyes were practically glowing. Tears streamed in watery rivers down either side of his nose, but there was an odd light in his eyes that curled a fist of warning in Sam's gut.

"What are you into, kid?" Dean asked, his voice still soft, but a tone slipping into it that Sam recognized: it was his _do what we gotta do_ tone.

"It's not me, that's the thing," the kid replied. "It's never been _me_."

"What's your name?" Dean asked, keeping his eyes on the boy's face.

"Clay."

"Clay, I'm Dean. That's my brother, Sam."

Clay glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah? The hell'r you doing here?"

Sam expected Dean to rattle off their usual covers – _taking in the sights, just driving by_. He took another route.

"We want to know what killed three people in this town, Clay," Dean replied. "Two died right here. Fell from this bridge." Dean tilted his head slightly as he regarded the boy's profile. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Clay whispered.

"Who's doing it, Clay?"

As he spoke, Dean moved closer still and Sam saw his left hand hovering just behind Clay's leg. Unable to stand still a moment longer, Sam made his way carefully down and across the still-intact piece of bridge road, holding his breath as he tightrope-walked across the brace beneath the broken concrete. The sliver of moon offered just enough light to show Sam how far he was going to fall if he stepped wrong. His stomach trembled, his heartbeat speeding up.

He glanced up once to see Dean's eyes on him, his brother's face tense. His vision wavered a bit, but as he felt Dean's eyes, he took a breath, balancing. Positioning himself on the opposite side of Clay, Sam looked up at the kid's tear-streaked face.

"I just wanted them to stop messing with me, y'know? Just leave me the hell alone. He said they would. But…I didn't know…I swear I didn't—"

Clay swayed slightly forward and Dean reached up instinctively, catching the kid's wrist.

"Talk to us, man," Dean replied. "Tell us what's going on here."

"You wouldn't understand," Clay replied miserably. "No one would. _I_ don't."

"Try us," Sam encouraged. "We might understand more than you think."

"Oh yeah?" Clay snorted derisively. "You understand nightmares walking around – real as you and me?"

"Yes," the brothers answered together, without hesitation.

Clay looked over at Dean with surprise.

"You come back to this side of the bridge and I'll tell you," Dean promised.

"No," Clay shook his head. "I deserve this. I deserve so much worse than this."

"Did you kill those people, Clay?" Sam asked softly, having pieced together that this was the boy the newspaper reported as a witness to the murders. "Did you…push them? Chase them?"

"Did you summon the dog?" Dean pressed.

"What? No!" Clay looked over in surprise. "How did you know about the dog?"

"I told you," Dean said. "I know bad."

Clay began to tremble. Sam could see it even in the dim light from the moon high overhead. He was beginning to give in.

"How?" Clay asked in a shaky whisper. "_How_ do you know?"

"My brother and me," Dean began, running his tongue along his bottom lip as he kept his eyes on the kid, "this is what we do. Stop evil."

"Well, _I'm_ evil," Clay said. "So you should just let me go."

"No, Clay," Sam shook his head, feeling his heart break a little for this scared, lonely kid. "You're not evil."

Clay looked at him suddenly and Sam felt his skin pull in close around him, as if all the air had been sucked from the space between them. The unnatural heat in the kid's eyes seared into Sam and a vice-like grip began to wrap around his head, filling his ears with a cacophony of sound. Voices upon voices clamored for attention inside of him and the vice clenched tighter causing Sam to cry out, his eyes closing against the onslaught.

He hadn't realized he'd gone to his knees until he felt the grind of broken concrete dig into his legs and the palms of his hands. After a moment, the voices abated, the pain fading. He was panting, sweat running from his hairline and stinging his eyes. He tasted blood and eased back to lean against the steel girder of the bridge, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

His nose was bleeding, he realized, opening blurry eyes to see Clay lying prone on the mangled road in front of him, one arm hanging down through the hole in the concrete, Dean on top of him, his knee pressed squarely into the back of the kid's neck.

"Sam! Answer me, dammit!"

"Wha…," Sam swallowed, wiping more blood away. "What happened?"

"Son of a bitch put a whammy on you," Dean growled. Sam saw that he had Clay's other arm twisted up behind his back. "You okay?"

Sam rubbed his eyes, pulling in a slow breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."

Clay cried out as Dean twisted his arm tighter. Sam blinked at his brother.

"How'd you get him to come down?"

"I didn't give him a choice," Dean said, looking over. "You sure you're okay? You're pretty pale."

"My head hurts, but I'm okay."

"You're bleeding," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah." Sam wiped his nose again. "I think it's stopped."

"What did you do, Clay, huh?" Dean asked, bending the kid's thumb at an uncomfortable angle. "Is this how you made those other people jump? You mind-fuck them?"

"No!" Clay gasped out. "It wasn't like that—it was him! _He_ did it!"

"Who?" Sam asked, using the steel girder to pull himself to his feet.

Once there, he saw a spot of wet on Dean's back, near his left shoulder. He reached down, taking Clay's arm from Dean's grip and motioning with his head for his brother to ease back. But Dean was too revved up to sit. He climbed over Clay, crossing the broken concrete and stepping over the hole so swiftly Sam's stomach took a dive.

Dean stood on the intact side of the bridge road, pacing as he talked. "You better give us something, Clay."

"Lemme up," Clay pleaded. "Can't breathe."

Sam looked at Dean, who nodded and pulled his gun. Sam released the kid's arm and sat back, allowing Clay to slowly push himself up to sitting position.

"What did you do to me?" Sam asked when Clay had taken a few deep breaths.

"I just made you hear the voices," Clay said softly.

Sam glanced at Dean. "It did sound like voices."

"Whose voices are they?" Dean asked Clay, keeping his gun trained on the kid. Sam saw the wet patch was in the front, too.

"Everyone he's taken. All of them."

"You mean those three people?" Dean asked.

Clay looked up at him and Sam saw Dean glance down to the kid's throat, not looking directly at his eyes.

"Not just them. Hundreds. Thousands. I don't know how many."

"Start at the beginning," Sam said.

Clay pulled his knees up and rubbed his face, his voice muffled through his palms. "He picked me 'cause I'm no one. Nobody knows me, nobody cares about me. Unless they want to mess with me. Like my stepdad. And my uncle."

"Let me guess – two of the victims?" Dean asked, his gun lowering slightly.

"Died here on this bridge." Clay, sniffed, fresh tears evident in his voice.

"Who was the third one?" Sam asked.

"She was a mistake," Clay moaned. "He said she was supposed to guide me. But I got scared and messed it all up." He dropped his hands. "He…picked her out for me."

"Picked her out…to do what?" Dean asked, lowering the gun completely. He exchanged a baffled look with Sam.

"He's been around a long ass time, man," Clay said, his eyes down, his head rolling slowly back and forth. "Not as the same guy, though. He picks a new person when the old one is wearing out and…becomes them."

"Possesses them?" Sam asked.

"Something," Clay shrugged. "He said he molds them into himself, and that way he lives forever. He needs sacrifices, though. Three sacrifices of people who deserve to die."

"Deserve according to…who?"

Clay buried his face again. "_Him_. People he thinks have done…bad things."

"And you helped him pick out the candidates," Dean replied, his tone thick with disgust. "Lambs to the slaughter."

Clay didn't reply.

"And because the third one was a mistake, he needs another sacrifice," Sam said softly. "Someone he believes he has just cause in killing."

Dean rubbed the back of his head, his face tight. "Tell me about the Dog," he demanded.

"The Dog is just his cover," Clay replied sullenly. "People around here have believed the Black Dog was a death omen forever. Sometimes deaths were blamed on the Dog and it wasn't even him doing it."

"And the whammy?" Dean pressed, stopping his pacing long enough to stare hard at Clay. "What's that about?"

Clay looked up, slipping his eyes to the side and down. "There was a…ritual. After the second sacrifice. And he…did stuff to me. And then I could hear them. And he said the only way to stop it was to finish this."

"What happens if you _don't_ finish it?" Sam asked, glancing quickly at Dean.

He wanted to get across the trestle. His brother had started pacing again, and Sam saw him holding his arm close to his side. He didn't want to think about how much it had hurt to pull Clay over the edge of the bridge.

"He dies," Clay whispers. "And…I guess I do, too."

Sam stepped away from Clay and jumped across the opening in the concrete to the solid portion where Dean stood.

"No," Dean shook his head. "No, you're not going down for this, man."

Clay looked up in surprise. "But…I just told you—"

"You told me that this freak _used_ you," Dean said. "We have to deal with the consequences of our choices, kid, but not the choices of others. Especially when they're evil sonsabitches."

Clay looked at Sam, then shifted his eyes back to Dean. "You're letting me off the hook?"

"More or less," Sam replied. "I mean, we still need to get this guy…."

"Even after I hurt you?" Clay asked, looking at Sam.

"I've had worse," Sam replied, offering the kid a small smile and ignoring the droning ache behind his eyes.

Clay sniffed, wiping the back of his grimy hand beneath his nose and smearing dirt in its wake. "No one's ever done that for me before."

"Yeah, well," Dean said quietly. "What can we say? We're givers."

"Where is he, Clay?" Sam asked.

"The newspaper," Clay replied absentmindedly.

"Where is that, downtown?" Sam pressed.

Clay shook his head, gaining his feet on the opposite side of the bridge from the brothers. "No, not that one," he said, still not quite focused on them or, seemingly, what he was saying. "The abandoned one. Big brick building, 'bout a mile down the road."

"You're coming with us," Dean told him, slipping his gun into his waistband at the small of his back and reaching out a hand to help the kid over the broken concrete.

Clay suddenly looked at him with such intensity that Sam nearly reached out and pulled Dean away. "No," Clay said. "No, you can't…I've gotta stop this. _I _can stop this."

"Wait!" Dean cried out as Clay turned and leapt over the gaping holes in the bridge and found his footing on solid ground. "Damn kid," Dean muttered, following. "He's gonna get himself killed."

"Or worse," Sam agreed as Clay ran off into the darkness.

They clambered over the concrete toward the road, heading for the car, Dean in the lead. Before they reached the edge of the road, they saw the flash of white as Clay's sneakers carried him down the road and out of sight at a fast clip.

Sam's mind churned over the rush of information they'd just been handed, trying to figure out their next move. He wanted to call Bobby, check on the facts Clay had given them, find out what they were up against and how to kill it – without getting themselves killed in the process.

He was about to suggest that very thing when Dean stopped cold in front of him, causing him to slam hard into his brother's back and knock them both off-balance.

"Dean, what the hell?"

"Tell me you saw that," Dean breathed, his eyes on the wet road shining in the moonlight.

"What?"

"The Dog—tell me you saw it that time."

Sam scanned the road, but saw nothing. He looked over at Dean. "Same one?"

"Big," Dean said, swallowing audibly. "Black. Real black. Freaky, bright red eyes."

"Think it's his?"

"Gotta be," Dean replied. "It's _gotta be_, right?" He looked up at his brother and Sam watched him roll his lips against his teeth in thought. "I mean, it's his cover. So it's still out there until he finishes this ritual thing with Clay."

"Well, don't go running off of any high places, okay?" Sam said, trying to keep them focused and steer his racing thoughts away from the lingering meanings of death omens.

"I _saw it_, Sam," Dean said, his voice slightly desperate.

"I believe you." Sam reassured him, resting his hand lightly on his brother's shoulder.

Dean shook himself. "We gotta stop that kid from doing something stupid."

"We need to rebandage your shoulder first," Sam told him.

Dean looked down as if only just realizing it had started bleeding again. "I'm okay."

"Dean, you're—"

"I said I'm fine, Sam," Dean snapped heading around to the driver's side of the car. "Let's finish this."

www

**Hanging Hills, night, outside abandoned newspaper building**

"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said, closing the phone and tossing it back into the glove compartment.

"What'd he say?" Dean asked, swallowing the meds Sam had thrust upon him with a huge gulp of water. He pressed a clean towel under his jacket against the seeping hole in his shoulder, his eyes closing, mouth tightening into a grimace.

"Sounds like we're dealing with something called an Asphyx," Sam told him.

Dean glanced at him, eyebrow raised. "I could say so many things right now."

Sam rolled his eyes. "The guy is essentially human. Or was. Until he made some kind of deal, Bobby's guessing."

"Like a crossroads deal?" Dean looked out through the windshield at the darkened brick building across the street from them.

"Could be," Sam said. "Bobby said that Asphyx's are created when someone finds a way to side-step death. They use the sacrifices like…countermeasures. Reapers are distracted by those souls and this guy uses the ritual to slip from one body to the next."

"What happens to the body he leaves?"

"Basically, it's already dead," Sam said, rubbing his still-aching head and trying not to think what he was thinking. "That's why he has to change up; the human body isn't built for immortality."

"So how do we kill it?" Dean asked.

"Like you'd kill any other human," Sam said. "It's as fragile as we are. Bobby said it could do this forever, though—as long as there were humans to sacrifice, it could live forever."

Quiet filled the car for a moment, heavy with meaning.

"I know what you're thinking," Dean said softly. He balled up the blood-stained towel and tossed it to the floorboards of the Impala.

"Can't help it," Sam replied. _Tempt not a desperate man_, he thought.

"It's not an option, Sam." Dean tilted his chin toward Sam, his eyes following at a slow blink as he thought through the ramifications. "No one life is worth mine. Ever. You understand?"

Sam looked down, feeling his stomach burn with unspoken protests. He never had the chance to say the same thing to Dean. He never had the option of saying _don't do this; my life isn't worth your life_. He had to just accept his brother's sacrifice and roll forward—regardless of the evil that was out there, searching for him.

_Him_ specifically.

Unless they could find a miracle, he was going to have to live without Dean and he never got the option to say _no_.

"Sam?"

"I understand," Sam replied, bitterness crinkling the corners of his words.

"We're better than that." The confidence in Dean's voice battled the loss in his eyes. "We don't need a sacrifice to survive."

"You mean aside from you?" Sam asked, his lips pulling tight to keep emotion at bay. It seemed he'd been on the edge of angry tears since the moment Ruby walked out of their motel room yesterday.

"That's not the same thing," Dean replied, shaking his head.

"How?" Sam demanded. "How is what you did for me _any_ different than what Nancy was willing to do for her friends?"

"You want to do this now?" Dean countered, thrusting his right hand out toward the building.

"Yeah, I wanna do it _now_!" Sam shouted. "I wanna know why we're here, chasing some Black Dog when we should be finding Bela and the Colt and figuring out how to _save you_."

"Because this is our job, Sam. This is who we are! This is _all I am_!"

"No." Sam shook his head, feeling the tears push forward, choking him. "No, you're more than this job, Dean." He looked away, his eyes on the building. "You're my brother."

Dean was silent beside him. Sam could hear him breathing, knew he wanted to say something to ease the painful tension between them, but there was nothing he could say that Sam would accept. Nothing was going to make the ache go away outside of saving Dean from Hell.

"Sam," Dean said, the urgency in his voice changing the subject from their issues to the task at hand with one syllable.

"I see him," Sam replied, watching as a tall, thin man dressed in a dark raincoat opened the main door of the building, glanced around him, then stepped inside. "Where's—"

He stopped when he saw Clay run up to the door, catch it before it closed and slip through.

"Okay," Sam sat back, checking the clip in his gun. "What's the plan?"

Dean pressed his lips out. "We have to get Clay away from Ambrose." He looked over at Sam. "We think it's Ambrose, right?"

Sam lifted a shoulder. "Good a guess as any. He made up the Black Dog stuff in the paper, right?"

"Right," Dean nodded, looking back at the building, clearing the chamber of his gun and slipping it back into his waistband. "We'll go in, you get Clay and I'll take out Ambrose."

"Take him out?" Sam looked at his brother, surprised.

Dean met his eyes squarely. "This guy stopped being human a long time ago, Sam."

And with that Winchester Brand of Justice still hanging in the air between them, Dean stepped from the car and began to cross the road at a slow lope. Sam swallowed his frustration at Dean's ability to justify his decisions even in the wake of his own logic and ran after him.

The dark inside the building was thick; Sam lost sight of Dean almost instantly. The only thing that told him his brother was still nearby was instinct. He could always feel Dean close, like a scent on the air or a sense that someone was watching him. Reaching out in the direction he'd seen Dean head when they entered, he felt the edge of Dean's jacket and tugged him closer.

"You go high, I'll go low," Dean whispered.

"What—" Sam choked off his question as his eyes adjusted and he saw a set of railing-free stairs in front of them.

Blinking further, he realized that there was light in the distance; a soft glow of embers. Like candles or firelight. Growing edges in the dark were large tables stacked with rotting rolls of paper and further into the building he made out the hulking shape of an ancient printing press. The smell of mildew and ink hung like thick sheets around him, forcing him to cover his nose and mouth with the crook of his elbow for a moment to catch his breath.

"Be careful," Dean ordered, then moved forward through the dark, somehow managing to avoid crashing into any of the equipment as he did so.

The cold knot grew in Sam's stomach; it had formed the moment he'd seen Clay balanced on the edge of the bridge and now as Dean walked away, leaving him standing alone in the dark, Sam felt it begin to take over every inch of emptiness inside of him.

"You too," he whispered into the space where his brother had been a moment ago.

Making his way quietly up the stairs, holding his breath in hopes that his weight didn't crash through the brittle wood, Sam fought to calm his racing thoughts. He was usually much better at quelling the rush of worry, sticking it into a box inside his mind to be brought out and examined closely when the time was better suited to the task.

But from the moment Ruby had knocked on their motel door and shown them the news of the police station's desiccation at Lilith's hand, Sam hadn't had a chance to breathe, to focus, to accept the ramifications of those actions.

The consequences of choice.

His choices.

Dean's choices.

They just kept moving, running, fighting, as if somehow it would all manage to make sense. If they just fought hard enough, for long enough.

He breached the top of the stairs and came to a landing that overlooked a larger room. The wood floor and brick walls of the room were bare save one large symbol painted in the center and reflected again on the far wall. It wasn't a symbol Sam recognized, but he'd bet money that Bobby would be able to find it in one of his old books.

Candles surrounded the symbol, placed at specific intersections. A window high above the symbol painted on the wall let in the slim moonlight, but even then shadows danced and darted around the edges of the large room. Across the empty space, in the corner of the room, Sam saw what looked like a large closet with an iron gate across the opening. The closet stretched up to his level.

"Elevator shaft," he whispered to himself, remembering the death of the third victim.

He could see from this angle that the elevator was an old platform-and-pulley system, covering the height of the easily ten-foot main floor and second floor landing. He didn't know how far down the shaft went—a building as old as this could have a pretty deep sub-basement.

Making his way toward the opposite end of the landing, Sam drew closer to the opening of the old elevator, searching the area below for signs of life—and his brother.

"Dammit, Dean," he muttered, stepping back a bit into the shadows. "Where the hell are you?"

"That won't matter to you," came a voice to his right, startling him and triggering his instinct to train his gun toward the threat, "when you're dead."

"Don't move," Sam ordered, his voice hard and tight, echoing in the darkness.

The thin man they'd watched enter the building stepped from the shadows, his confident approach forcing Sam back a step toward the opening to the elevator.

"You think you came in here unseen? Unheard? You think I don't know everything that has transpired tonight?"

"Ambrose, right?" Sam steadied his weapon, bracing himself to end this on his own, trying to put his fear for where Dean had ended up out of his mind. "What did you do to Clay?"

"Oh," the man shrugged his thin shoulders, still moving forward as if the barrel of Sam's gun were filled with flowers, "he's around here. Somewhere. I'm not worried about Clay, though I fear I may have chosen…poorly."

"This ends. Tonight." Sam worked to steady his voice, forcing himself to breath slowly. He backed up another step, further from the stairs he'd come up, and his only escape.

"And you're the one to do it, are you?" Ambrose said, his thin, dry lips cracking into a ghoulish smile, exposing yellowed teeth. "After a hundred years, some punk kid from the pages of a fashion magazine is going to have the _temerity _to bring me down?"

"You bet your ass," Dean's voice echoed from behind Ambrose.

Sam shifted his focus, glancing back at the stairs to where his brother stood in the shadows, his gun steady on the man between them.

"Sorry, Sammy," Dean said, not taking his eyes off of Ambrose. "Guess we should have both gone high."

"You two fools mean nothing," Ambrose scoffed, waving a thin-fingered hand at them. "After tonight this will all be over and I'll continue on, just as I have before."

"You're forgetting something, aren't you, pal?" Dean asked. "You need another sacrifice."

Ambrose didn't look back toward Dean; instead, he kept his eyes steady and Sam saw them shift to a black he'd seen too many times in his past. Demonic eyes. Depthless in their emptiness and evil. His face cracked open in what might've once been a smile and Sam felt his stomach turn to water.

"Oh, I haven't forgotten."

Sam had time to gasp, time to hear his brother cry his name, and then a force he hadn't expected—not from something that was essentially _human_—slammed into him, lifting him from his feet and propelling him backward through the opening of the shaft.

It struck him that he should have seen this coming. Evil was evil, despite what it might have started as. But he didn't have time to beat himself up about being unprepared: his breath escaped him with the force of the hit and his body seemed to almost drift, weightless for a moment, until he crashed down against the unyielding surface of the elevator platform.

Sound slipped meaning around him, voices and words elusive. Everything blurred, wavered. He worked to slow it all down, but it was like trying to grab smoke. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. His eyes burned, his head throbbed, and he could taste blood in his mouth.

"Easy, easy, it's okay."

The voice was vaguely familiar, but Sam was in too much pain to find the significance.

"Take a breath, man!"

Coughing weakly, Sam found he was able to draw in a weak breath as his lungs recovered from the shock. He dragged in more air and fought back the darkness that threatened to overcome his spinning sight, surprised to see Clay near him, working the cables of the elevator platform. It came to him then that he'd not fallen nearly as far as he could have.

"Cl-Clay?" Sam coughed, rolling painfully to his side and squeezing his eyes shut as his head pounded hard in protest of this movement.

"Sorry," Clay panted. "I tried to get it up higher, but I didn't want him to see me."

Sam pushed himself weakly to his knees, his body thrumming, his vision swimming. He didn't think anything was broken, but he knew he wasn't going to be going anywhere fast.

"Dean," he gasped.

"I know, I know," Clay panted, shoving a lever forward and locking the platform in place. "I could only get one of you at a time."

Sam tried to get to his feet, gripping the exposed boards inside the elevator shaft. He felt a tug at one of his ankles and looked down. "The hell?"

A handcuff was wrapped around his ankle and connected to the metal frame of the elevator platform. Looking up and around, he caught sight of Clay climbing up the wall braces a few feet to the first floor of the old building. He'd positioned Sam in the shadows of the floor so that if someone peered down into the shaft, they'd see only darkness.

"Hey!" Sam called weakly. "M-my brother!"

"Shut up!" Clay hissed back at him. "Stay here. Stay quiet. He doesn't know you're not dead. Sorry about the cuffs, man, but you _have to stay here_. Whatever you do, keep your brother down here with you. No matter what, okay?"

"Wha—" Sam blinked, his buzzing head cloudy with confusion. Keep Dean with him? Where was Dean now?

Pulling himself to the length of the cuffs, Sam peered up through the shaft, realizing he could see the edge of the landing and finally putting meaning with the sounds he'd been hearing since he fell: Dean was fighting Ambrose. And it wasn't pretty.

Sam could barely see his brother's face, but what he did see was bloody. Dean had lost his gun, his left arm hung limp, but he was growling viciously as he attacked, beating his fist against the thin man's face. Ambrose was pressed back against the railing that surrounded the landing, and the sound he emitted in the face of Dean's onslaught had Sam's blood running cold: the man was laughing.

Dean staggered back, clearly exhausted.

"You're dead," Dean rasped, his voice sounding like wet gravel. "You just don't know it yet."

"No," Ambrose mocked, laughing as he thrust Dean back and away. "You're wrong." His voice sing-songed in retort, making Sam's skin crawl.

Sam wanted to call out to Dean, to reassure him that he was okay, but he didn't know what that would do to Clay's plan, and at the moment, the scrawny teenager that no one cared about was all that stood between them and death.

"Ambrose!" Clay suddenly shouted. Sam couldn't see him from his position in the elevator shaft, but the boy's voice was close. "I'm here. I got everything you asked for, see?"

Ambrose straightened and Sam saw Dean's legs give out, his brother going to his knees, catching himself with his right hand before collapsing completely. Ambrose cackled with manic glee and Sam watched as the thin man vaulted the edge of the landing and fell the ten feet to the floor, alighting with unnatural, cat-like grace and making his way out of Sam's eye-line toward Clay.

Sam heard staggered, raspy breathing above him and looked up to see brother's battered face peering down the elevator shaft at him.

"Sam!" Dean's voice echoed down the shaft, desperation sweeping through the name. "_SAM!_"

Sam waved an arm, hoping that it the motion could be caught within the dark. When he saw Dean's expression twist in anger and pain, he realized that Dean couldn't see him.

"Dean," he breathed, barely a whisper. "Dean, I'm here."

Dean couldn't hear him, though. Sam watched his brother's face crumble, saw his head bow with grief, and something in his heart twisted sideways so painfully he almost cried out. Dean uttered a low keen, like that of a dying animal and Sam saw him gripping the edge of the elevator shaft so tightly his shoulders shook.

Pressing a hand to his chest, Sam closed his eyes to center himself, then looked back up. Dean's face was gone, but the moment was seared into Sam's memory, branded into his retinas like the afterimage of a lightning strike.

_That_ was why Sam hadn't been given a choice. _That _was why Dean had made such a sacrifice. Sam had never seen such grief, such loss. Not even when they stood side-by-side watching their father's body burn.

Exhaling a shaking breath, Sam pulled himself awkwardly up, gripping the exposed wooden girders of the elevator shaft. He balanced in a half stance-half crouch on the swaying platform, trying to keep it from hitting the sides of the elevator shaft, his ankle twisting painfully, and peered up through the opening.

He couldn't let himself be seen. He'd played along with Clay's plan so far – having just destroyed his brother's hope – he had to see it through.

"I thought you'd run away, Clay," Ambrose was saying, his boot heels clicking dully against the worn wood. "I heard the moment you shared the voices with that other boy."

"Oh," Clay replied. Sam tried to shift his eyes and see the kid's face, but his angle was all wrong. "I, uh, didn't know you could do that."

"I told you," Ambrose replied, his voice undulating as he turned away, walking the circle of the symbol they stood on. "I can do more than you can possibly imagine."

"Like the Emperor, right? In _Star Wars_."

Sam's heart panged at the innocence in that question.

"Exactly like that," Ambrose replied.

"And I'll be able to do it, too? When this is done?" Clay moved a little closer to the elevator shaft. "The voices…the voices will all stop?"

Sam heard Ambrose chuckle. "If you want them to, they'll stop."

"I want them to. I want this all to be over."

"Then let's finish it," Ambrose said, suddenly standing close to Clay.

Sam could smell the age on the thin man as he hadn't been able to when they were on the landing. There was something wrong; something pricking his subconscious as he strained to see more.

"There's just one thing I need to know." Clay's voice shaking slightly with adrenaline or fear, Sam couldn't be sure.

"Oh, how I tire of your incessant questions," Ambrose murmured. "What is it _now_, boy?"

"What happens to me if you die?"

Ambrose went completely quiet. Sam felt the air in the room still.

"What was that?" Ambrose practically hissed.

"If you die," Clay repeated, his voice growing steadier with conviction. "What happens to me?"

Sam heard a scratching sound, almost like boots shuffling across sand. He strained his reach and his eyes, but couldn't see Ambrose's face, or anything of Clay aside from the kid's hands.

"You are connected to me, boy," Ambrose said in a cold, emotionless voice. "We began the ritual and there is no going back from it. You become my vessel…or you die."

Sam swallowed. The scratching sound drew closer. Clay and Ambrose didn't move.

"That's what I thought," Clay said, his voice almost resigned. "Too bad they didn't just let me fall." He sighed, then sounding like a kid told he had chores to do, he droned, "Now…I guess I gotta kill you."

"You don't have the nerve." Ambrose mocked, his dead voice like nails on a chalkboard to Sam's ears.

"_I _do."

It was Dean's voice, but it sounded nothing like his brother. Without pause for breath or bluster, a gunshot immediately followed Dean's declaration and Sam saw Ambrose spin, crying out in surprise more than pain, and crash against the far wall. Clay rushed forward out of Sam's line of sight.

"Get out of here, kid," Dean growled, and Sam was suddenly very afraid.

Sam heard the sound of a scuffle and saw Dean's booted feet coming closer, Clay's sneakers scrambling to keep up.

"You don't understand—" Clay tried.

"Doesn't matter anymore. This bastard killed my brother." Dean's voice was so dangerous Sam felt his insides tremble.

"No, wait!" Clay yelled as Dean fired again.

Sam heard a howl, like that of a wild dog, and instinctively ducked, his tenuous grip slipping as he tumbled down to the floor of the elevator platform. The sound of his fall was masked by the fight above him. He looked up and could see Ambrose push Clay aside, waving his arms and slamming outward with the same force that had knocked Sam down the elevator shaft. He heard Dean scream in pain and another crash reverberated through the cavernous room.

Candles extinguished, tossing deeper shadows into the room above Sam's head. Whatever Clay had planned was going to hell and Dean was up there in it. Sam opened his mouth to shout and let Dean know he was down there when a figure suddenly loomed in the open doorway. Someone was falling the few feet down to him and Sam curled his arms over his head, bracing himself for the impact.

A tangle of arms and legs sent Sam's breath on exodus once more and as he gasped, he heard Clay shout, "Stay there!"

In a dizzying moment of clarity, Sam realized the figure lying on top of him was his brother. He pushed himself upright as quickly as his battered body would allow, his bruised shoulders and aching head whimpering at the swift movement. He turned Dean's limp body in his arms, awkwardly positioning his brother partly in his lap as he cradled Dean's head close to him.

"Dean?" Sam whispered, tapping his lax cheek. "Hey, man, open your eyes."

The side of Dean's face was smeared with blood from a cut above his eyebrow. His left arm was wet from the torn wound, and his breathing was shallow. Sam ran his hand quickly over Dean's torso, but couldn't detect anything broken on his cursory examination. He shook Dean gently.

"Wake up, Dean," he pleaded.

And then above him, the world seemed to suddenly explode as if every candle in the room turned into a flare of light. Sam ducked and Dean jerked, not fully awake, but instinctively reacting to the sound. Looking up, Sam saw Ambrose looming above them, peering down into the shaft with insanity in his eyes. Sam could feel Dean coming around slowly, turning sluggishly against Sam's chest, not unconscious but tense.

Sam wrapped his arm tightly around his brother, pulling him close against him and covering Dean's mouth with his hand. He dragged them both as deep into the shadows as he could, the platform rattling with the movement. He knew Ambrose's ritual wasn't working; he still had a third sacrifice to make.

"He's not dead!" Ambrose declared. "Get down there and finish him! We are wasting time."

"No." Sam heard Clay's voice behind the surprisingly imposing figure of Ambrose. The kid sounded terrified and defiant at the same time.

Sam broke out into a sweat, knowing exactly what was about to happen and realizing in that same moment that he was going to let it.

He felt Dean's breath change; his brother was awake. For a moment, Dean struggled against Sam's hold, but then Sam felt him go still, realizing who it was holding him. Dean's lips moved against Sam's fingers—his name, Sam knew. He looked down and met his brother's eyes in the shadows.

"I'm okay," Sam whispered. "Stay still."

Dean frowned, his eyes cloudy with pain and confusion. He tried to push Sam's arm away, but Sam held him firm. Above them, a battle waged. Sam heard Ambrose rail and roar at Clay, and Clay's young voice resisting as he put in motion the plan he'd inadvertently started on the bridge.

Sam felt his stomach twist nauseatingly; he knew the only way to save Clay was to also save Ambrose – and that would kill a lot more people. Dean's arms trembled as he tried to pull at Sam, twisting and turning, protesting the hold, but too exhausted to break it.

"Don't fight me, Dean," Sam insisted, his mouth close to his brother's ear. "This is the only way."

Dean shook his head, resisting still the idea of an innocent dying to save them. But Sam knew that this time Dean's way wasn't the right way. This time, they had to let it play out, had to let Clay make his choice and end this struggle. This time, there _were_ acceptable losses, and his brother was not going to be among them.

"You do this, and we're both done for," Ambrose shouted.

"I know," Clay replied, utterly calm.

Sam jerked as the sound of gunfire blasted through the room upstairs. Two shots, three. Dean flinched in his arms, his trembling hand still gripping Sam's wrist. A fourth shot and then all was quiet.

After a moment, Sam slowly released Dean's mouth and they lay tangled together gasping quietly in the dark.

"Sam?" Dean rasped.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm _so sorry_."

"You're okay?"

"I'm okay. Bruised, but—"

"Alive," Dean said, gingerly pushing himself off of Sam's lap, his eyes large in the shadows, roaming Sam's face as though he could never look enough. His right hand fumbled from Sam's cheek to his chest. "You're alive."

Sam nodded. "I wanted to call out to you, but—"

"Clay," Dean realized, glancing up. "Clay stopped you."

Sam rattled his leg, showing his brother the cuff around his ankle. "He told me to keep you down here, no matter what."

"He knew," Dean swallowed, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, looking sick for a brief moment. "He knew what was going to happen the minute he ran off that bridge."

Sam nodded, feeling inexorably tired, his body aching in multiple places, tears burning behind his eyes.

"And we just…let him die." Dean finished miserably.

"We didn't have a choice, Dean," Sam protested.

"God _dammit_," Dean groaned, dragged a hand down his face. "We should have saved him…we should have _tried_." Dean bowed his back, curling over himself, cradling his bleeding arm against his chest.

Sam watched, unsure what to say, how to offer comfort. "Dean—"

If they'd never gone on this hunt, Ambrose would have taken over Clay and the cycle would have continued until another hunter stumbled across the pattern. If they hadn't saved Clay at the bridge, both would still have died, but Clay would have died defeated.

"He was a hero, man," Sam offered. "He sacrificed himself to save us—and a whole lot of other people."

_Like Dad_, Sam wanted to say. Saving Dean had saved countless lives—people who wouldn't be here if it weren't for his brother. But Dean hadn't moved, hadn't so much as taken a breath, and Sam didn't think it was the best time to bring John into the mix.

They sat that way for several minutes, Dean's body in a tight fist, Sam helplessly watching him.

"He leave you a key?" Dean asked, his voice muffled by his position.

Sam shook his head, only then realizing that his tears had fallen. The droplets tucked themselves into the corners of his mouth and he dragged a hand down his face, wiping them away.

"No."

Dean straightened and Sam saw his wall was back, turning his eyes dead, his face stoic. "You got your gun?"

Sam shook his head, searching his brother's face for some sign that they were going to be okay—that _this_ was okay.

Dean nodded, then started to shrug out of his jacket, grimacing as he moved his left arm.

"What are you doing?"

"Keep a paper clip in the liner," he said. "Just…can't reach it…."

Sam realized that the light in the elevator shaft was increasing. He had lost track of time, but he was pretty sure they hadn't been inside long enough for it to be daylight. He looked up past Dean's head.

"Oh, shit," he breathed.

"What?" Dean asked looking up and then around.

The building was on fire.

"Son of a—"

A loud pop followed by an explosion that rattled the elevator shaft sent Dean tumbling against Sam as the platform shifted. Sam shoved him back up into a sitting position, noticing how his brother's arms trembled. Using his teeth, Dean tore out one of the seams in the lining of his coat, removing the paperclip and bending it so that he could snake the piece of wire into the lock at Sam's ankle. Sam held still, practically ceasing to breathe, as Dean worked.

He felt the cuff give and pulled his foot free from the awkward angle, rubbing the skin. Standing, he made his way to the pulley and brake, releasing the latch and running the cable through his hands, over and over, until they were level with the burning main floor.

Dean cursed, surveying the damage the fight had done to the room and the two bodies lying within. "We can't leave him here, Sam."

Sam saw his eyes were pinned to the prone body of Clay several feet from the worn-out husk that had once been Ambrose. He looked as if he were asleep, until Sam saw the blood pooling beneath him.

The fire had spread outward from the symbol and was busy eating its way along the outer flooring, up the staircase, and chewing through the printing press and several random barrels filled with who-knew-what. The sound of the flames was deafening, the heat suffocating. Sam began to cough into the crook of his arm, his eyes streaming tears that had nothing to do with emotion.

"Take him out and come back for me," Dean ordered.

Frowning, Sam looked down. Dean was still sitting, the gray T-shirt he'd put on earlier that day now streaked with dirt and blood, his eyes red from both smoke and tears. Sam hadn't realized how beat his brother was until he didn't stand up.

"Not a chance," Sam declared.

"Sam—"

"Shut the hell up," Sam shouted. "I'm not leaving you here."

He bent, slinging Dean's right arm over his shoulder and straightened slowly, pulling his brother to his feet. Dean grit his teeth, stifling a cry of pain before finding his feet, his legs wobbly and fragile. They moved from the elevator platform and dodged the fire, unsteadily weaving their way across the room, both coughing from the increasing smoke.

Dean spied his gun and they paused for him to pick it up. As his good hand was busy gripping the hell out of Sam's shoulder, he held it loosely in his left as they picked their way past the burning press and floating bits of flaming paper. Sam felt Dean shaking against him as a gut-wrenching cough overcame him and they went to their knees, trying to catch their breath.

Crawling forward, below the smoke, they finally reached the door. Sam pushed it open, grabbing Dean against him and stumbling out into the chill of the night air. Seconds after their escape, Sam realized he heard swiftly approaching sirens.

_And the hits just keep on coming_, he thought, holding onto Dean as he tried to maneuver around the side of the building.

"Sam, the kid," Dean reminded him, gasping as the clean air filtered the smoke from his heavy lungs.

"Cops," Sam shot back.

He continued to haul Dean around the side of the burning building, the bricks shielding them from the worst of the heat. In the light of the flames he saw a small house several yards behind the building.

"You hear a dog?" Dean asked, trying to pull away and take some of his weight from Sam.

About to deny it, Sam realized that he could hear a dog's frantic barking over the roar of the flames. Dean tugged his arm free and staggered forward heading toward what Sam could now see was a chain-linked fence surrounding the house. Behind them, Sam heard shouting and felt the cast-off of sprayed water. He looked over his shoulder and saw firemen holding a hose on the flames while others ran inside. He knew they'd be pulling Clay free.

"Sam," Dean called.

Sam stumbled forward, meeting his brother at the edge of the fence where a large, black, German Sheppard-looking dog was going nuts, terrified by the flames and strangers.

"Is that it? The Black Dog?" Sam asked, his voice sounding weak and rough to his own ears.

"It's a black dog, alright," Dean said. He straightened up and looked past Sam toward the road where their car waited for them, his gun held loose in his hand, blood drying his T-shirt to his shoulder. He reached up and rubbed at his mouth with the back of his right hand. "But it's not _the_ Black Dog."

"What? How do you know?"

"Because," he shifted his eyes to Sam and the look of hopelessness caught inside them had Sam's stomach bottoming out just as it had when they'd been standing on that bridge. "It's right over there."

Sam turned so sharply he nearly lost his balance. He looked in the direction where they'd parked the Impala and saw only the chrome of the car reflecting in the light of the fire. The Sheppard barked insanely behind him, the fire roared to his left, and still he stared.

"You see it now?" Sam rasped.

"Yeah," Dean replied in a hollow voice. "It's just…looking at me."

Sam turned back to his brother. "Dean…."

Dean looked down and then turned toward the fence. "Hey, there," he said quietly. "Hey boy, easy. It's okay. You're gonna be okay."

The dog stopped barking, but continued to growl low in its throat, its teeth bared, the hair along its spine raised in warning.

"Let's go," Sam encouraged. "They'll find him."

"I know," Dean said. "And they'll probably put him to sleep."

"What do you want to do?"

Dean looked over his shoulder toward the Impala, and Sam saw him square his shoulders, his face pulling tight as the motion cost him. He reached over to the latch at the gate stepped back as he set the dog free. For a moment, the Sheppard stood there, looking at him, confused. Then it looked at the fire burning so close.

"Go," Dean told it.

With that order, the dog leapt free of the fence and ran down the road toward the wooded area they'd driven through earlier that evening. Turning from the fence, Dean sighed and took a step forward. Sam saw Dean's eyes roll up just before his legs gave out. He felt as if he were moving underwater as he lunged, catching Dean awkwardly, going to his knees with his brother in his arms.

"No, no no," Sam shook his head, tapping Dean's cheek. "Not yet, not yet."

Dean rolling his head sluggishly, and Sam shook him. "Open your eyes, Dean," he demanded. "We're not out of this yet."

"Fuckin' dog," Dean slurred. "Watchin' me…."

Sam felt him straighten slightly, coming around, opening his eyes wide and peering into the dark. He pull Dean's good arm across his shoulders and shoved to his feet, dragging his brother with him. He needed to get them to the car; he didn't have much left by way of reserves.

"It could have been a shadow," Sam offered, trying desperately to warm the ice in his stomach with alternatives, with hope. "Maybe a trick of light from the fire."

"Maybe," Dean conceded, his head drooping as he leaned against Sam, doing his best to cooperate with the effort of forward movement.

"I mean, the dog we set free…that had to be the one he was using to fool people, right?"

"Right, Sammy." Dean's voice was barely audible as they reached the Impala.

"Doesn't mean there was a real Black Dog here...," Sam muttered as he dug out the keys from Dean's pocket. "Doesn't mean a thing."

He was rambling, he knew, but he couldn't seem to stop. Dean's silence was forcing him to fill the space with alternatives to what his gut told him was truth. Sam eased his brother into the passenger seat. Dean bit back a groan and dropped his head against the seat, his face pulled into a fist of pain. Sam saw him shiver and shrugged out of his coat, covering his brother's bare arms with the material still warm from his body heat.

"Thanks," Dean said.

Sam jogged around to the other side of the car, slipping behind the wheel and firing up the engine. He glanced at the burning building, wondering if anyone fighting that fire would ever figure out what had really transpired inside. He saw two stretchers behind an ambulance, sheets pulled over the figures lying on them. He glanced over at Dean, hoping he, too, had seen that Clay was out of the building.

But Dean was looking at something else. Something that Sam couldn't see. Something that Sam desperately wanted to deny.

…_to see the Black Dog the first time means joy…a second sighting means misfortune. Seeing the Black Dog a third time is a death omen._

"I won't let it happen," Sam declared. "I won't, Dean. There's still time."

Dean looked over at him and the pain and weariness of the evening seemed to finally catch up to him. Sam felt his heart constrict as his brother's eyes filled with tears.

"There's still time," Sam repeated quietly, his voice choked.

Dean nodded and rolled his lower lip in against his teeth.

"Dean? You believe me, right? We'll find a way out of this. We'll figure it out."

Dean looked down and Sam saw a tear drop to the back of his jacket where it covered Dean. "I believe you," Dean said softly, but in his voice Sam heard a note of something that sounded too much like acceptance.

Something that was tired of losing people, no matter how hard he fought, no matter how long he fought.

Sam shifted into reverse and turned to head back the way they'd come, glad they'd parked the car far enough from the building they didn't attract attention as they left. The sound of the tires on the dark road seemed to spin names up to him: Jessica, Jim, Caleb, Dad, Henricksen, Nancy, Clay…Sam. He knew Dean counted him even though he was back, even though he was _here_.

He knew Dean counted his loss every time he felt his heart beat.

And then there was Lilith. Some great, demonic power who'd set her sights on Sam; one more brick in the wall between him and peace, one more coil in the rope destined to hang him. Sam rubbed his face, Dean's blood on his hand. Some days it was enough to make a guy want to quit.

"Where'r we goin'?" Dean asked, his voice slurred.

"You promised me a Hilton, remember?" Sam said. "But, first, I think we need to get your shoulder cleaned up."

"Can't go to a hospital, Sam," Dean said, straightening. "Gunshot wound. They report those."

"No hospital," Sam promised. "I saw some other place on the way in."

The sun was bruising the night sky with the promise of dawn as Sam picked the lock of the small clinic. A quick check showed him that Hanging Hills Prompt Care hadn't invested in a security system, trustworthy folks that they were. Dean was almost dead weight against him as they stumbled into the supply room. He eased his brother down to a chair and started to clean his wound by cutting the dirty, gray T-shirt from him.

"You're a mess," Sam said, shaking his head at his brother.

"You're no picture of health yourself, Princess," Dean muttered, his head canted back against the wall. "You fall down an elevator shaft or something?"

"Funny," Sam muttered, turning on the water in the utility sink and wetting a rag to clean Dean's shoulder.

"Sam," Dean said suddenly, pulling Sam's attention with the quiet devastation in his voice. "Don't ever do that to me again, okay?"

Sam hung his head, feeling his heart tug at the memory of the look on his brother's face. "I'm sorry, Dean," he said sincerely. "I wanted to answer you when you called out to me, but, if I had—"

"I know why you did it," Dean reassured him, "but just…don't. Not again. I can't handle it."

_But you expect _me_ to,_ Sam thought with a pang. _You expect me to handle you dying. What if I _can't_, Dean? What if I can't live with you dead?_

"I won't."

"Promise me," Dean insisted as Sam approached with the rag.

"I promise," Sam replied, meeting Dean's eyes.

Dean went quiet as Sam pulled the soiled gauze from his wounds, then cleaned the skin around the holes in his shoulder with hot, soapy water. His mind raced as his hands moved automatically—cleaning the wound, injecting Dean's shoulder with lidocaine, stitching up the worst of the tears, applying ointment, taping it up once more.

He cleaned the cut above Dean's eyebrow, noting the bruises framing his brother's eye. The cut wasn't deep; butterfly bandages closed it nicely, which was good because Sam's hands had begun to shake from stress and fatigue and he wasn't able to keep his vision focused for longer than a few seconds.

The entire time, Dean stayed quiet and still, flinching when he couldn't help it, but not saying a word.

Sam's thoughts filled the quiet with enough _what ifs_ and _could we haves_ he almost wished Dean would talk, just to distract him from his own feverish doubts. He searched the bottles on the shelf until he found more antibiotics and pain medication, handing Dean a dose with some water.

As an afterthought, he swallowed some pain meds himself, his head, neck, and shoulders reminding him that he wasn't made of rubber. He looked at himself in the reflection of the medicine cabinet. He looked worse than rough. He looked bruised and broken.

"You bring the money?" Dean asked wearily.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, pulling a roll of bills from their last pool hustle out of his pocket and setting it on the shelf near the bottles of medicine. "Hey, Dean?"

"Hmm?" Dean's head was resting against the wall, his bare chest half soot-covered, half clean from Sam's ministrations. His eyes were closed and he looked about ready to slip from the chair and puddle onto the floor.

"If someone had to summon the Black Dog, but Ambrose made it all up with a real dog to scare people and cover his tracks…who summoned the one you saw?"

Dean opened his blood-shot eyes slowly. Sam could see his gaze was unfocused, his pupils large enough there was barely any green around the edges.

"Maybe it was real. Maybe…it was a warning," Dean said quietly.

"I don't want to believe that," Sam replied, barely above a whisper.

"Me neither," Dean confessed. "Me neither, Sammy."

Sam handed him a long-sleeved shirt and helped him pull it on over his wounded shoulder. Dean buttoned it clumsily, his fingers not cooperating with him. Standing under his own power seemed to be the extent of his strength, so Sam ducked under his arm, helping him from the clinic—locking the door behind them—and to the car as the sun rose high enough to filter through the tree tops.

They pulled from the empty lot and headed west. Sam turned the radio on as Dean slumped against the door, sleeping with Sam's jacket draped over him once more. Twisting the dial, Sam paused as he heard Linkin Park's _Numb_ climb through the airwaves.

He was so tired; he hoped the driving beat of the music would keep him alert and aware until they were able to stop once more. They both needed rest. They both needed answers.

Listening to the lyrics, he looked over at his brother, truly afraid both were destined to elude them.

"I'm not gonna quit, Dean," he said softly to his sleeping brother. "I'm not gonna let you go to Hell."

www

**Pontiac, IL, now**

"He fought, Sam." Bobby's voice was rough from sorrow, his words tearing apart the quiet of the night that pressed close around them. "He fought until the end. Damn kid wouldn't give up. Always admired that about him. He always believed there was a way…."

Bobby's voice cracked, dying. Sam knew he was right; Dean had fought until the end—all-but challenging the Hellhounds to get him and drawing attention from Sam. But there was a part of Sam that knew Dean had accepted the truth weeks ago.

He remembered the moment, exactly. Before Ruby's Hail Mary plan. Before Indiana. Before the hallucinations.

He remembered the quiet tear splashing the back of a soot-covered jacket. He remembered the hollow echo of hopelessness in his brother's voice. _Maybe it was real. Maybe…it was a warning._

"You want to know why?" Sam asked the older hunter, his voice like a rusted hinge.

Bobby startled at his words, and Sam realized they were they first he'd spoken since Dean had been taken from him.

That's how he thought of it. Dean hadn't just _died_. He'd been ripped from this world, torn apart and dragged below right before Sam's eyes.

"Why, kid?" Bobby asked, softly.

Sam forced himself to look again at Dean's face. They'd closed his eyes, cleaned the blood from it. _He could be sleeping_, Sam thought, and for one wild moment wanted to check, but it was pointless. He could be sleeping but for the horrific tears in his body, Sam knew.

"Because he's going to need a body when I get him back," Sam informed his friend.

"Sam…."

Ignoring the note of horror in Bobby's tone, Sam knelt next to the crude wooden box they'd built for his brother. He reached behind Dean's cold neck and gently shifted his brother's head, removing the amulet that Dean had worn for so many years. Lifting it from his brother's body, Sam stood and dropped it over his own head, closing his eyes as he felt the weight rest like a gentle hand against his chest.

Oddly, the metal still felt warm, even hours after Dean had gone cold.

Sam took a shallow breath, images of his brother assaulting the darkness behind his eyes. Dean angry, Dean smiling, Dean in tears, Dean teasing him, Dean singing in the car, Dean in pain, Dean bleeding, Dean fighting, Dean holding him, Dean protecting him….

"I'm gonna get him back," Sam vowed, unable to watch as Bobby placed the lid on the box that held Dean's body.

He helped his friend lower the box into the grave, swaying dizzily as Bobby dropped in the first shovel full of dirt. It hit the box with a dull thud that nearly sent Sam tipping over the edge to join his brother.

"_I know why you did it,"_ Dean had said once, _"but just…don't. Not again. I can't handle it."_

Sam felt himself breaking inside, his own shovel slipping from his sweaty grasp. He dropped it, stepping away, watching numbly as Bobby finished the job.

He couldn't bury his brother. He couldn't handle it. He knew Dean had done the only thing he could when he'd saved Sam at that crossroads. And he knew his brother had fought right up until he realized one more swing would take Sam with him.

He knew Dean hadn't wanted to die, but would rather be dead than live without Sam. And now Sam was left in a world of demons without his protector, without his brother.

_It's not gonna last_, Sam promised himself. _I'm gonna get you back, Dean_.

The moment Dean had accepted his fate was the moment Sam had vowed he would get him out of it.

No matter what.

* * *

><p><strong>an****: **Thank you for reading.

FYI, I took the idea of the Asphyx from a movie by the same name. I pulled a Nester Ambrose, though, and made the lore my own for the purposes of this story.

I've a few one-shots planned for people as very sincere thank-yous. The requests are intriguing and I am looking forward to bringing them to life as time permits. I look forward to your thoughts as always. My best to you.

**Playlist:**

_Mr. Saturday Night Special_ by Lynyrd Skynyrd

_Numb_ by Linkin Park


End file.
